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Gp fflarp Johnston 


THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books: dealing 
with the war between the States. With Illustrations 
in color by N. C. Wyvern. 


LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. 
YOuN. 


AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. Youn. 
PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece. 


TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by 
Howarp Pytg, E. B. THompson, A. W. Betts, and 
EMLEN McConneELt. 


THE GODDESS OF REASON. A Drama. 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston AND New York 








THE LONG ROLL 


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STONEWALL JACKSON 








“THE LONG ROLL 


BY MARY JOHNSTON 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
DY NC OW Vere 





HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK :: THE 

RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 
IQII 








COPYRIGHT, IQII, BY MARY JOHNSTON 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


Published May ror 


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To the Demory of 
JOHN WILLIAM JOHNSTON 


MAIOR OF ARTILIT ERY, CS. A. 
AND OF 


JOSEPH EGGLESTON JOHNSTON 


GENERAL, C.S. A. 


G8397'¢ 





TO THE READER 


writers, diarists, and contributors of but a vivid page or two 

to the magazines of Historical Societies, to whom the writer 
of a story dealing with this period is indebted, would be to place 
below a very long list. In lieu of doing so, the author of this book 
will say here that many incidents which she has used were actual 
happenings, recorded by men and women writing of that through 
which they lived. She has changed the manner but not the sub- 
stance, and she has used them because they were “true stories’’ and 
she wished that breath of life within the book. To all recorders of 
these things that verily happened, she here acknowledges her in- 
debtedness and gives her thanks. 


T° name the historians, biographers, memoir and narrative 





CONTENTS 


THE BOTETOURT RESOLUTIONS . 
THE HILLTOP 

THREE OAKS 

GREENWOOD . 

THUNDER RUN . 

By AsHByY’s GAP . 


THE Docs oF WaR 


. A C8RISTENING 


WINCHESTER 
LIEUTENANT MCNEIL 


‘““As JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING ” 


“THe BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP’’. 
. Foot Tom JACKSON . 


. THE IRON-CLADS 


KERNSTOWN 


- RUDE'S HILL 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH 


. McDoweELu 

. THE FLOWERING WOOD . 

. FRONT ROYAL 

. STEVEN Dacc . 

OwPHE VALLEY PIKE : 
. MOTHER AND SON 


XXIV. 


. ASHBY 


XLVILI. 
. MBLVIITL. 


CONTENTS 


THE Foot CAVALRY 


. THE BRIDGE AT Port REPUBLIC 
. JUDITH AND STAFFORD 

. THE Loncest Way Rounp 

. THE Nine-MILE Roap 

. AT THE PRESIDENT’S 

. THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN Days 
. GAINES’s MILL 

. THE HEEL oF ACHILLES 

. THE RAILROAD GUN 

. WHITE OAK Swamp 

. MALVERN HILL 

. A Woman 

. CEDAR RUN 

. THE FIELD oF MANASSAS 

. A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S 

_ THE LOLEGATE 

. SPECIAL ORDERS, No. 191 

. SHARPSBURG 

. By THE OPEQUON 

. THE LONE TREE HILt 


. FREDERICKSBURG , 


THE WILDERNESS 
THE RIVER 


331 


- 343 


354 


37k 


382 


- 399 


412 


- 434 


446 


405 


481 


- 498 


516 


» 530 


545 


- 557 


572 


. 580 


589 


. 602 


616 


. 629 


639 


. 655 


670 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


STONEWALL JACKSON . 
THE LOVERS 
‘THE BATILE 


THE VEDETTE . 


From drawings by N. C. Wyeth. 


Frontis piece 
220 
. 456 


642 





(Pk LONG ROLL 


CHAPTER! 


THE BOTETOURT RESOLUTIONS = 


hard in its excitement. It might have climbed rapidly from a 

lower land, so heightened now were its pulses, so light and 
rare the air it drank, so raised its mood, so wide, so very wide the 
opening prospect. Old red-brick houses, old box-planted gardens, 
old high, leafless trees, out it looked from its place between the 
mountain ranges. Its point of view, its position in space, had each 
its value —whether a lesser value or a greater value than other points 
and positions only the Judge of all can determine. The little town 
tried to see clearly and to act rightly. If, in this time so troubled, so 
obscured by mounting clouds, so tossed by winds of passion and of 
prejudice, it felt the proudest assurance that it was doing both, at 
least that self-infatuation was shared all around the compass. 

The town was the county-seat. Red brick and white pillars, set 
on rising ground and encircled by trees, the court house rose 
like a guidon, planted there by English stock. Around it gathered 
a great crowd, breathlessly listening. It listened to the reading of 
the Botetourt Resolutions, offered by the President of the Supreme 
Court of Virginia, and now delivered in a solemn and a ringing 
voice. The season was December and the year, 1860. 


O' this wintry day, cold and sunny, the small town breathed - 


The people of Botetourt County, in general meeting assembled, believe 
it to be the duty of all the citizens of the Commonwealth, in the present 
alarming condition of our country, to give some expression of their 
opinion upon the threatening aspect of public affairs... . 

In the controversies with the mother country, growing out of the effort 


2 THE LONG ROLL 


of the latter to tax the Colonies without their consent, it was Virginia 
who, by the resolution against the Stamp Act, gave the example of the first 
authoritative resistance by a legislative body to the British Government, 
and so imparted the first impulse to the Revolution. 

Virginia declared her Independence before any of the Colonies, and 
gave the first written Constitution to mankind. 

By her instructions her representatives in the General Congress in- 
troduced a resolution to declare the Colonies independent States, and the 
Declaration itself was written by one of her sons. 

She fursished to the Confederate States the father of his country, 
under whose guidance Independence was achieved, and the rights and 
Liberties of each State, it-was hoped, perpetually established. 

She stood undismayed through the long night of the Revolution, 
breasting the storm of war and pouring out the blood of her sons like 
water on every batilefield, from the ramparts of Quebec to the sands of 
Georgia. 


A cheer broke from the throng. “That she did — that she did! 
‘Old Virginia never tire.’ ” 


By her unaided efforts the Northwestern Territory was conquered, 
whereby the Mississippi, instead of the Ohio River, was recognized as the 
boundary of the United States by the treaty of peace. 

To secure harmony, and as an evidence of her estimate of the value of 
the Union of the States, she ceded to all for their common benefit this 
magnificent region — an empire in ttself. 

When the Articles of Confederation were shown to be inadequate to 
secure peace and tranquillity at home and respect abroad, Virginia first 
moved to bring about a more perfect Union. 

At her instance the first assemblage of commissioners took place at 
Annapolis, which ultimately led to a meeting of the Convention which 
formed the present Constitution. 

The instrument itself was in a great measure the production of one of 
her sons, who has been justly styled the Father of the Constitution. 

The government created by it was put into operation, with her Wash- 
ington, the father of his country, at its head; her Jefferson, the author of 
the Declaration of Independence, in his cabinet; her Madison, the great 
advocate of the Constitution, in the legislative hall. 


THE BOTETOURT RESOLUTIONS 3 


“And each of the three,” cried a voice, “left on record his judg- 
ment as to the integral rights of the federating States.” 


Under the leading of Virginia statesmen the Revolution of 1798 was 
brought about, Louisiana was acquired, and the second war of inde- 
pendence was waged. 

Throughout the whole progress of the Republic she has never in- 
fringed on the rights of any State, or asked or received an exclusive 
benefit. 

On the contrary, she has been the first to vindicate the equality of all 
the States, the smallest as well as the greatest. 

But, claiming no exclusive benefit for her efforts and sacrifices in the 
common cause, she had a right to look for feelings of fraternity and kind- 
ness for her citizens from the citizens of other States. . . . And that the 
common government, to the promotion of which she contributed so largely, 
for the purpose of establishing justice and ensuring domestic tran- 
guillity, would not, whilst the forms of the Constitution were observed, 
be so perverted in spirit as to inflict wrong and injustice and produce 
universal insecurity. 

These reasonable expectations have been grievously disappointed — 


There arose a roar of assent. “That’s the truth! — that’s the 
plain truth! North and South, we’re leagues asunder! — We don’t 
think alike, we don’t feel alike, and we don’t interpret the Constitu- 
tion alike! I’ll tell you how the North interprets it! — Government 
by the North, for the North, and over the South! Go on, Judge 
Allen, go on!” 


In view of this state of things, we are not inclined to rebuke or censure 
the people of any of our sister States in the South, suffering from injury, 
goaded by insults, and threatened with such outrages and wrongs, for 
their bold determination to relieve themselves from such injustice and 
oppression by resorting to their ultimate and sovereign right to dissolve 
the compact which they had formed and to provide new guards for their 
future security. 


“South Carolina! — Georgia, too, will be out in January. — Ala- 
_bama as well, Mississippi and Louisiana. — Go on!” 


4 THE LONG ROLL 


Nor have we any doubt of the right of any State, there being no com- 
mon umpire between coequal sovereign States, to judge for itself on its 
own responsibility, as to the mode and manner of redress. 

The States, each for itself, exercised this sovereign power when they 
dissolved their connection with the British Empire. 

They exercised the same power when nine of the States seceded from 
the Confederation and adopted the present Constitution, though two 
States at first rejected it. 

The Articles of Confederation stipulated that those articles should 
be inviolably observed by every State, and that the Union should be 
perpetual, and that no alteration should be made unless agreed to by 
Congress and confirmed by every State. 

Notwithstanding this solemn compact, a portion of the States did, 
without the consent of the others, form a new compact; and there ts 
nothing to show, or by which it can be shown, that this right has been, 
or can be, diminished so long as the States continue sovereign. 


“The right’s the right of self-government — and it’s inherent and 
inalienable! — We fought for it— when didn’t we fight for it? 
When we cease to fight for it, then chaos and night! — Go on, goon!” 


The Confederation was assented to by the Legislature for each State ; 
the Constitution by the people of each State, for such State alone. One 
1s as binding as the other, and no more so. 

The Constitution, it is true, established a government, and it operates 
directly on the individual ; the Confederation was a league operating 
primarily on the States. But each was adopted by the State for itself; 
in the one case by the Legislature acting for the State; in the other by 
the people, not as individuals composing one nation, but as composing 
the distinct and independeni States to which they respectively belong. 

The foundation, therefore, on which it was established, was FEDERAL, 
and the State, in the exercise of the same sovereign authority by which 
she ratified for herself, may for herself abrogate and annul. 

The operation of its powers, whilst the State remains in the Con- 
federacy, is NATIONAL; and consequently a State remaining in the 
Confederacy and enjoying its benefits cannot, by any mode of procedure, 
withdraw its citizens from the obligation to obey the Constitution and 
the laws passed in pursuance thereof. 


THE BOTETOURT RESOLUTIONS 5 


But when a State does secede, the Constitution and laws of the United 
Staies cease to operate therein. No power is conferred on Congress to 
enforce them. Such authority was denied to the Congress in the con- 
vention which framed the Constitution, because it would be an act of 
war of nation against nation — not the exercise of the legitimate power 
of a government io enforce its laws on those subject to its jurisdiction. 

The assumption of such a power would be the assertion of a preroga- 
tive claimed by the British Government to legislate for the Colonies in 
all cases whatever; it would constitute of itself a dangerous attack on 
the rights of the States, and should be prompily repelled. 


There was a great thunder of assent. “‘That is our doctrine — 
bred in the bone — dyed in the weaving! Jefferson, Madison, 
Marshall, Washington, Henry — further back yet, further back — 
back to Magna Charta!”’ 


These principles, resulting from the nature of our system of confed- 
erate States, cannot admit of question in Virginia. 

In 1788 our people in convention, by their act of ratification, declared 
and made known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being 
derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them 
whenever they shall be perverted to their injury and oppression. 

From what people were these powers derived ? Confessedly from the 
people of each State, acting for themselves. By whom were they to be 
resumed or taken back? By the people of ihe State who were then grani- 
ing them away. Who were to determine whether the powers granted had 
been perverted to their injury or oppression? Not the whole people of 
the United States, for there could be no oppression of the whole with 
their own consent; and it could not have entered into the conception of 
the Convention that the powers granted could not be resumed until the 
oppressor himself untied in such resumption. ; 

They asserted the right to resume in order to guard the people of 
Virginia, for whom alone the Convention could act, against the oppres- 
sion of an irresponsible and sectional majority, the worst form of op- 
pression with which an angry Providence has ever afflicted humanity. 

Whilst therefore we regret that any State should, in a matter of 
common grievance, have determined to act for herself without consult- 
ing with her sister States equally aggrieved, we are nevertheless con- 


6 THE LONG ROLL 


strained to say that the occasion justifies and loudly calls for action 
of some kind... . 

In view therefore of the present condition of our country, and the 
causes of it, we declare almost tn the words of our fathers, contained in 
an address of the freeholders of Botetourt, in February, 1775, to the 
delegates from Virginia to the Continental Congress, “That we desire 
no change in our government whilst lefi to the free enjoyment of our 
equal privileges secured by the CONSTITUTION; but that should a tyran- 
nical SECTIONAL MAJORITY, under the sanction of the forms of the 
CONSTITUTION, persist in acts of injustice and violence toward us, they 
only must be answerable for the consequences.” 

That liberty 1s so strongly impressed upon our hearts that we cannot 
think of parting with it but with our lives; that our duty to God, our 
country, ourselves and our posterity forbid it; we stand, therefore, 
prepared for every contingency. 

RESOLVED THEREFORE, Thai in view of the facts set out in the fore- 
going preamble, it is the opinion of this meeting that a convention of 
the people should be called forthwith; that the State in its sovereign 
character should consult with the other Southern States, and agree upon 
such guarantees as in their opinion will secure their equality, tran- 
guillity and rights WITHIN THE UNION. 


The applause shook the air. “Yes, yes! within the Union! 
They’re not quite mad — not even the black Republicans! We’ll 
save the Union! — We made it, and we'll save it! — Unless the 
North takes leave of its senses. — Go on!” 


And in the event of a failure to obtain such guarantees, to adopl in 
concert with the other Southern States, OR ALONE, such measures as 
may seem most expedient to protect the rights and ensure the safety of 
the people of Virginia. 


The reader made an end, and stood with dignity. Silence, then a 
beginning of sound, like the beginning of wind in the forest. It grew, 
it became deep and surrounding as the atmosphere, it increased into 
the general voice of the county, and the voice passed the Botetourt 
Resolutions. 


CHAPTER II 
THE HILLTOP 


N the court house portico sat the prominent men of the 
() county, lawyers and planters, men of name and place, 

moulders of thought and leaders in action. Out of these 
came the speakers. One by one, they stepped into the clear space 
between the pillars. Such a man was cool and weighty, such a man 
was impassioned and persuasive. Now the tense crowd listened, 
hardly breathing, now it broke into wild applause. The speakers 
dealt with an approaching tempest, and with a gesture they checked 
off the storm clouds. “ Protection for the manufacturing North at the 
expense of the agricultural South — an old storm centre! Terrtiorial 
Rights — once a speck in the west, not so large as a man’s hand, and 
now beneath it, the wrangling and darkened land! The Bondage of 
the African Race — a heavy cloud! Our English fathers raised it; 
our northern brethren dwelled with it; the currents of the air fixed 
it in the South. At no far day we will pass from under it. In the 
mean time we would not have it burst. In that case underneath it 
would lie ruined fields and wrecked homes, and out of its elements 
would come a fearful pestilence! The Triumph of the Republican 
Party — no slight darkening of the air is that, no drifting mist of the 
morning! It is the triumph of that party which proclaims the Con- 
stitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell! — of 
that party which tolled the bells, and fired the minute guns, and 
draped its churches with black, and all-hailed as saint and martyr the 
instigator of a bloody and servile insurrection in a sister State, the 
felon and murderer, John Brown! The Radical, the Black Republi- 
can, faction, sectional rule, fanaticism, violation of the Constitution, 
aggression, tyranny, and wrong — all these are in the bosom of that 
cloud! — The Sovereignty of the State. Where is the tempest which 
threatens here? Not here, Virginians! but in the pleasing assertion 
of the North, ‘There is no sovereignty of the State!’ ‘A State is 
merely to the Union what a county is to a State.’ O shades of John 


8 THE LONG ROLL 


Randolph of Roanoke, of Patrick Henry, of Mason and Madison, 
of Washington and Jefferson! O shade of John Marshall even,whom 
we used to think too Federal! The Union! We thought of the Union 
as a golden thread — at the most we thought of it as a strong serv- 
ant we had made between us, we thirteen artificers — a beautiful 
Talus to walk our coasts and cry “All’s well!’ We thought so — by 
the gods, we think so yet! That zs our Union — the golden thread, 
the faithful servant; not the monster that Frankenstein made, not 
this Minotaur swallowing States! The Sovereignty of the State! Vir- 
ginia fought seven years for the sovereignty of Virginia, wrung it, 
eighty years ago, from Great Britain, and has not since resigned it! 
Being different in most things, possibly the North is different also in 
this. It may be that those States have renounced the liberty they 
fought for. Possibly Massachusetts — the years 1803, 1811, and 
1844 to the contrary — does regard herself as a county. Possibly 
Connecticut — for all that there was a Hartford Convention! — 
sees herself in the same light. Possibly. ‘Brutus saith ’t is so, and 
Brutus is an honourable man!’ But Virginia has not renounced! 
Eighty years ago she wrote a certain motto on her shield. To-day 
the letters burn bright! Unterrified then she entered this league 
from which we hoped so much. Unterrified to-morrow, should a 
slurring hand be laid upon that shield, will she leave it!” 

Allan Gold, from the schoolhouse on Thunder Run, listened with 
a swelling heart, then, amid the applause which followed the last 
speaker, edged his way along the crowded old brick pavement to 
where, not far from the portico, he made out the broad shouiders, 
the waving dark hair, and the slouch hat of a young man with whom 
he was used to discuss these questions. Hairston Breckinridge 
glanced down at the pressure upon his arm, recognized the hand, 
and pursued, half aloud, the current of his thought. “I don’t be- 
lieve I’ll go back to the university. I don’t believe any of us will go 
back to the university. — Hello, Allan!” 

“T’m for the preservation of the Union,” said Allan. “I can’t 
help it. We made it, and we’ve loved it.” 

“T’m for it, too,” answered the other, “in reason. I’m not for it 
out of reason. In these affairs out of reason is out of honour. There ’s 
nothing sacred in the word Union that men should bow down and 
worship it! It’s the thing behind the word that counts — and who- 


THE HILLTOP 9 


ever says that Massachusetts and Virginia, and Illinois and Texas 
are united just now is a fool or a liar! — Who’s this Colonel Ander- 
son is bringing forward? Ah, we’ll have the Union now!” 

“Who is it?” 

“Albemarle man, staying at Lauderdale. — Major in the army, 
home on furlough. — Old-line Whig. I’ve been at his brother’s 
place, near Charlottesville —” 

From the portico came a voice. ‘I am sure that few in Botetourt 
need an introduction” here. We, no more than others, are free from 
vanity, and we think we know a hero by intuition. Men of Bote- 
tourt, we have the honour to listen to Major Fauquier Cary, who 
carried the flag up Chapultepec!”’ 

Amid applause a man of perhaps forty years, spare, bronzed, and 
soldierly, entered the clear space between the pillars, threw out his 
arm with an authoritative gesture, and began to speak in an odd, 
dry, attractive voice. ‘You are too good!” he said clearly. “I’m 
afraid you don’t know Fauquier Cary very well, after all. He’s no 
hero — worse luck! He’s only a Virginian, trying to do the right 
as he sees it, out yonder on the plains with the Apaches and the 
Comanches and the sage brush and the desert —”’ 


There was an interruption. “ How about Chapultepec?’’ — “ And 
the Rio Grande ?”’— “ Did n’t we hear something about a fight in 
Texas ?” 


The speaker laughed. “A fight in Texas? Folk, folk, if you 
knew how many fights there are in Texas — and how meritorious 
it is to keep out of them! No; I’m only a Virginian out there.”’ 
He regarded the throng with his magnetic smile, his slight and 
fine air of gaiety in storm. ‘‘As you know, I am by no means the 
only Virginian, and they are heroes, the others, if you like! — 
real, old-line heroes, brave as the warriors in Homer, and a long 
sight better men! I am happy to report to his kinsmen here that 
General Joseph E. Johnston is in health — still loving astronomy, 
still reading du Guesclin, still studying the Art of War. He’s a 
soldier’s soldier, and that, in its way, is as fine a thing as a poet’s 
poet! I see men before me who are of the blood of the Lees. Out 
there by the Rio Grande is a Colonel Robert E. Lee, of whom 
Virginia may well be proud! There are few heights in those west- 
ern deserts, but he carries his height with him. He’s marked for 


IO THE LONG ROLL 


greatness. And there are ‘Beauty’ Stuart, and Dabney Maury, 
the best of fellows, and Edward Dillon, and Walker and George 
Thomas, and many another good man and true. First and last, 
there’s a deal of old Virginia following Mars, out yonder! We’ve 
got Hardee, too, from Georgia, and Van Dorn from Mississippi, 
and Albert Sidney Johnston from Kentucky — no better men in 
Homer, no better men! And there are others as soldierly — 
McClellan with whom I graduated at West Point, Fitz-John 
Porter, Hancock, Sedgwick, Sykes, and Avérell. McClellan and 
Hancock are from Pennsylvania, Fitz-John Porter is from New 
Hampshire, Sedgwick from Connecticut, Sykes from Delaware, 
and Averell from New York. And away, away out yonder, in the 
midst of sage brush and Apaches, when any of us chance to meet 
around a camp-fire, there we sit, while coyotes are yelling off in 
the dark, there we sit and tell stories of home, of Virginia and 
Pennsylvania, of Georgia and New Hampshire!” 

He paused, drew himself up, looked out over the throng to the 
mountains, studied for a moment their long, clean line, then 
dropped his glance and spoke in a changed tone, with a fiery sud- 
denness, a lunge as of a tried rapier, quick and startling. 

“Men of Botetourt! I speak for my fellow soldiers of the Army 
of the United States when I say that, out yonder, we are blithe to 
fight with marauding Comanches, with wolves and with grizzlies, 
but that we are not — oh, we are not — ready to fight with each 
other! Brother against brother — comrade against comrade — 
friend against friend — to quarrel in the same tongue and to slay 
the man with whom you’ve faced a thousand dangers — no, we are 
not ready for that! 

“Virginians! I will not believe that the permanent dissolution of 
this great Union is come! I will not believe that we stand to-day 
in danger of internecine war! Men of Botetourt, go slow — go 
slow! The Right of the State —I grant it! I was bred in that doc- 
trine, as were you all. Albemarle no whit behind Botetourt in that! 
The Botetourt Resolutions — amen to much, to very much in the 
Botetourt Resolutions! South Carolina! Let South Carolina go in 
peace! It is her right! Remembering old comradeship, old battle- 
fields, old defeats, old victories, we shall still be friends. If the Gulf 
States go, still it is their right, immemorial, incontrovertible! — 


THE HILLTOP II 


The right of self-government. We are of one blood and the country 
is wide. God-speed both to Lot and to Abraham! On some sunny 
future day may their children draw together and take hands again! 
So much for the seceding States. But Virginia, — but Virginia made 
possible the Union, — let her stand fast in it in this day of storm! 
in this Convention let her voice be heard — as I know it will be 
heard — for wisdom, for moderation; for patience! So, or soon or 
late, she will mediate between the States, she will once again 
make the ring complete, she will be the saviour of this great his- 
toric Confederation which our fathers made!”’ 

A minute or two more and he ended his speech. As he moved from 
between the pillars, there was loud applause. The county was 
largely Whig, honestly longing — having put on record what it 
thought of the present mischief and the makers of it — for a peaceful 
solution of all troubles. As for the army, county and State were 
proud of the army, and proud of the Virginians within it. It was 
amid cheering that Fauquier Cary left the portico. At the head of 
the steps, however, there came a question. “One moment, Major 
Cary! What if the North declines to evacuate Fort Sumter? What 
if she attempts to reinforce it? What if she declares for a compulsory 
Union ?” 

Cary paused a moment. “She will not, she will not! There are 
politicians in the North whom I’ll not defend! But the people — 
the people — the people are neither fools nor knaves! They were 
born North and we were born South, and that is the chief difference 
between us! A Compulsory Union! That is a contradiction in terms. 
Individuals and States, harmoniously minded, unite for the sweet- 
ness of Union and for the furtherance of common interests. When 
the minds are discordant, and the interests opposed, one may be 
bound to another by Conquest — not otherwise! What said Hamil- 
ton? To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever de- 
vised !”? He descended the court house steps to the grassy, crowded 
yard. Here acquaintances claimed him, and here, at last, the surge 
of the crowd brought him within a yard of Allan Gold and his com- 
panion. The latter spoke. “Major Cary, you don’t remember me. 
I’m Hairston Breckinridge, sir, and I’ve been once or twice to Green- 
wood with Edward. I was there Christmas before last, when you 
came home wounded —” 


12 THE LONG ROLL 


The older man put out a ready hand. “Yes, yes, I do remember! 
We had a merry Christmas! I am glad to meet you again, Mr. 
Breckinridge. Is this your brother ?”’ 

“No, sir. It’s Allan Gold, from Thunder Run.”’ 

“T am pleased to meet you, sir,” said Allan. ‘‘You have been 
saying what I should like to have been able to say myself.” 

“T am pleased that you are pleased. Are you, too, from the 
university?” 

“No, sir. I could n’t go. I teach the school on Thunder Run.” 

‘Allan knows more,” said Hairston Breckinridge, “than many of 
us who are at the university. But we must n’t keep you, sir.” 

In effect they could do so no longer. Major Cary was swept away 
by acquaintances and connections. The day was declining, the final 
speaker drawing to an end, the throng beginning to shiver in the 
deepening cold. The speaker gave his final sentence; the town band 
crashed in determinedly with ‘‘ Home, Sweet Home.” To its closing 
strains the county people, afoot, on horseback, in old, roomy, high- 
swung carriages, took this road and that. The townsfolk, still ex- 
cited, still discussing, lingered awhile round the court house or on 
the verandah of the old hotel, but at last these groups dissolved 
also. The units betook themselves home to fireside and supper, and 
the sun set behind the Alleghenies. 

Allan Gold, striding over the hills toward Thunder Run, caught 
up with the miller from Mill Creek, and the two walked side by side 
until their roads diverged. The miller was a slow man, but to-day 
there was a red in his cheek and a light in his eye. ‘Just so,” he 
said shortly. “‘They must keep out of my mill race or they’ll get 
caught in the wheel.”’ 

“Mr. Green,” said Allan, ‘how much of all this trouble do you 
suppose is really about the negro? I was brought up to wish that 
Virginia had never held a slave.” 

“So were most of us. You don’t hold any.” 

“cc No” 

“No more I don’t. No more does Tom Watts. Nor Anderson 
West. Nor the Taylors. Nor five sixths of the farming folk about 
here. Nor seven eighths of the townspeople. We don’t own a negro, 
and I don’t know that we ever did own one. Not long ago I asked 
Colonel Anderson a lot of questions about the matter. He says. the 


THE HILLTOP 13 


census this year gives Virginia one million and fifty thousand white 
people, and of these the fifty thousand hold slaves and the one million 
don’t. The fifty thousand ’s mostly in the tide-water counties, too, 
— mighty little of it on this side the Blue Ridge! Ain’t anybody 
ever accused Virginians of not being good to servants! and it don’t 
take more’n half an eye to see that the servants love their white 
people. For slavery itself, I ain’t quarrelling for it, and neither was 
Colonel Anderson. He said it was abhorrent in the sight of God and 
man. He said the old House of Burgesses used to try to stop the 
bringing in of negroes, and that the Colony was always appealing 
to the king against the traffic. He said that in 1778, two years after 
Virginia declared her Independence, she passed the statute prohib- 
iting the slave trade. He said that she was the first country in the 
civilized world to stop the trade — passed her statute thirty years 
before England! He said that all our great Revolutionary men 
hated slavery and worked for the emancipation of the negroes who 
were here ; that men worked openly and hard for it until 1832. 
Then came the Nat Turner Insurrection, when they killed all those 
women and children, and then rose the hell-fire-for-all, bitter-’n-gall 
Abolition people stirring gunpowder with a lighted stick, holding on 
like grim death and in perfect safety fifteen hundred miles from 
where the explosion was due! And as they denounce without think- 
ing, so a lot of men have risen with us to advocate without thinking. 
And underneath all the clamour, there goes on, all the time, quiet 
and steady, a freeing of negroes by deed and will, a settling them in 
communities in free States, a belonging to and supporting Coloniza- 
tion Societies. There are now forty thousand free negroes in Vir- 
ginia, and Heaven knows how many have been freed and established 
elsewhere! It is our best people who make these wills, freeing their 
slaves, and in Virginia, at least, everybody, sooner or later, follows 
the best people. ‘Gradual manumission, Mr. Green,’ that’s what 
Colonel Anderson said, ‘with colonization in Africa if possible. The 
difficulties are enough to turn a man’s hair grey, but,’ said he, 
‘slavery’s knell has struck, and we’ll put an end to it in Virginia 
peacefully and with some approach to wisdom — if only they’ll 
stop stirring the gunpowder!’ ” 
The miller raised his large head, with its effect of white powder 
from the mill, and regarded the landscape. “‘ We’re all mighty 


14 THE LONG ROLL 


blind, poor creatures,’ as the preacher says, but I reckon one day 
we'll find the right way, both for us and for that half million 
poor, dark-skinned, lovable, never-knew-any-better, pretty-happy- 
. on-the-whole, way-behind-the-world people that King James and 
King Charles and King George saddled us with, not much 
to their betterment and to our certain hurt. I reckon we’ll 
find it. But I’m damned if I’m going to take the North’s word 
for it that she has the way! Her old way was to sell her negroes 
South.” 

“T’ve thought and thought,” said Allan. “People mean well, 
and yet there’s such a dreadful lot of tragedy in the world!” 

“T agree with you there,” quoth the miller. “And I certainly 
don’t deny that slavery ’s responsible for a lot of bitter talk and a lot 
of red-hot feeling ; for some suffering to some negroes, too, and fora 
deal of harm to almost all whites. And I, for one, will be powerful 
glad when every negro, man and woman, is free. They can never 
really grow until they are free — I’ll acknowledge that. And if they 
want to go back to their own country I’d pay my mite to help them 
along. I think I owe it to them — even though as far as I know I 
have n’t a forbear that ever did them wrong. Trouble is, don’t any 
of them want to go back! You could n’t scare them worse than to 
tell them you were going to help them back to their fatherland! The 
Lauderdale negroes, for instance — never see one that he is n’t laugh- 
ing! And Tullius at Three Oaks, — he ’d say he could n’t possibly 
think of going — must stay at Three Oaks and look after Miss 
Margaret and the children! No, it is n’t an easy subject, look at it 
any way you will. But as between us and the North, it ain’t the 
main subject of quarrel — not by a long shot it ain’t! The quarrel’s 
that a man wants to take all the grist, mine as well as his, and 
grind it in his mill! Well, I won’t let him — that’s all. And here’s 
your road to Thunder Run.” 

Allan strode on alone over the frozen hills. Before him sprang the 
rampart of the mountains, magnificently drawn against the eastern 
sky. To either hand lay the fallow fields, rolled the brown hills, rose 
the shadowy bulk of forest trees, showed the green of winter wheat. 
The evening was cold, but without wind and soundless. The birds 
had flown south, the cattle were stalled, the sheep folded. There was 
only the earth, field and hill and mountain, the up and down of a 


THE HILLTOP 1s 


narrow road, and the glimmer of a distant stream. The sunset had 
been red, and it left a colour that flared to the zenith. 

The young man, tall, blond, with grey-blue eyes and short, fair 
beard, covered with long strides the frozen road. It led him over a 
lofty hill whose summit commanded a wide prospect. Allan, reach- 
ing this height, hesitated a moment, then crossed to a grey zigzag of 
rail fence, and, leaning his arms upon it, looked forth over hill and 
vale, forest and stream. The afterglow was upon the land. He 
looked at the mountains, the great mountains, long and clean of line 
as the marching rollers of a giant sea, not split or jagged, but even, 
unbroken, and old, old, the oldest almost in the world. Now the an- 
cient forest clothed them, while they were given, by some constant 
trick of the light, the distant, dreamy blue from which they took 
their name. The Blue Ridge — the Blue Ridge — and then the 
hills and the valleys, and all the rushing creeks, and the grandeur of 
the trees, and to the east, steel clear between the sycamores and 
the willows, the river — the upper reaches of the river James. 

The glow deepened. From a farmhouse in the valley came the 
sound of a bell. Allan straightened himself, lifting his arms from the 
grey old rails. He spoke aloud. 


Breathes there the man with soul so dead, — 


The beil rang again, the rose suffused the sky to the zenith. The 
young man drew a long breath, and, turning, began to descend the 
hill. 

Before him, at a turn of the road and overhanging a precipitous 
hollow, in the spring carpeted with bloodroot, but now thick with 
dead leaves, lay a giant oak, long ago struck down by lightning. The 
branches had been cut away, but the blackened trunk remained, 
and from it as vantage point one received another great view of the 
rolling mountains and the valleys between. Allan Gold, coming 
down the hill, became aware, first of a horse fastened to a wayside 
sapling, then of a man seated upon the fallen oak, his back to the 
road, his face to the darkening prospect. Below him the winter wind 
made a rustling in the dead leaves. Evidently another had paused 
to admire the view, or to collect and mould between the hands of the 
soul the crowding impressions of a decisive day. It was, apparently, 
the latter purpose; for as Allan approached the ravine there came to 


16 THE LONG ROLL 


him out of the dusk, in a controlled but vibrant voice, the following 
statement, repeated three times: “We are going to have war. — We 
are going to have war. — We are going to have war.” 

Allan sent his own voice before him. “TI trust in God that’s not 
true! — It ’s Richard Cleave, there, is n’t it?” 

The figure on the oak, swinging itself around, sat outlined against 
the violet sky. ‘‘ Yes, Richard Cleave. It’s a night to make one think, 
Allan — to make one think — to make one think!” Laying his 
hand on the trunk beside him, he sprang lightly down to the road- 
side, where he proceeded to brush dead leaf and bark from his cloth- 
ing with an old gauntlet. When he spoke it was still in the same 
moved, vibrating voice. “‘War’s my métier. That’s a curious thing 
to be said by a country lawyer in peaceful old Virginia in this year of 
grace! But like many another curious thing, it’s true! I was never on 
a field of battle, but I know all about a field of battle.” 

He shook his head, lifted his hand, and flung it out toward the 
mountains. ‘‘I don’t want war, mind you, Allan! That is, the great 
stream at the bottom does n’t want it. War is a word that means 
agony to many and a set-back to all. Reason tells me that, and my 
heart wishes the world neither agony nor set-back, and I give my 
word for peace. Only — only — before this life I must have fought 
all along the line!”’ 

His eyes lightened. Against the paling sky, in the wintry air, 
his powerful frame, not tall, but deep-chested, broad-shouldered, 
looked larger than life. “I don’t talk this way often — as you’ll 
grant!” he said, and laughed. “But I suppose to-day loosed all our 
tongues, lifted every man out of himself!” 

“Tf war came,” said Allan, “it could n’t be a long war, could it ? 
After the first battle we’d come to an understanding.” 

“Would we?” answered the other. “ Would we? — God knows! 
In the past it has been that the more equal the tinge of blood, the 
fiercer was the war.” 

As he spoke he moved across to the sapling where was fastened his 
horse, loosed him, and sprang into the saddle. The horse, a magnifi- 
cent bay, took the road, and the three began the long descent. It was 
very cold and still, a crescent moon in the sky, and lights beginning 
to shine from the farmhouses in the valley. 

“Though I teach school,” said Allan, “I like the open. I like to 


THE HILLTOP at, 


do things with my hands, and I like to go in and out of the woods. 
Perhaps, all the way behind us, I was a hunter, with a taste for 
books! My grandfather was a scout in the Revolution, and his 
father was a ranger. . . . God knows, J don’t want war! But if it 
comes I’ll go. We vt all go, I reckon.” 

“Ves, we'll all go,” said Cleave. “ We’ll need to go.” 

The one rode, the other walked in silence for a time; then said 
the first, ““I shall ride to Lauderdale after supper and talk to Fau- 
quier Cary.” 

“You and he are cousins, are n’t you ?” 

“Third cousins. His mother was a Dandridge — Unity Dan- 
dridge.” 

“T like him. It ’s like old wine and nee steel and a cavalier poet — 
that type.” 

“Yes, it is old and fine, in men and in women.’ 

“He does not want war.’ 

“e Na! 

“Hairston Breckinridge says that he won’t discuss the possibility 
at all — he’ll only say what he said to-day, that every one should 
work for peace, and that war between brothers is horrible.” 

“Tt is. No. He wears a uniform. He cannot talk.” 

They went on in silence for a time, over the winter road, through 
the crystal air. Between the branches of the trees the sky showed 
intense and cold, the crescent moon, above a black mass of moun- 
tains, golden and sharp, the lights in the valley near enough to be 
gathered. 

“Tf there should be war,” asked Allan, “what will they do, all 
the Virginians in the army — Lee and Johnston and Stuart, Maury 
and Thomas and the rest ?” 

“They ’ll come home.” 

“ Resigning their commissions ?”’ 

“ Resigning their commissions.” 

Allan sighed. “That would be a hard thing to have to do.” 

“They’ll do it. Would n’t you?” 

The teacher from Thunder Run looked from the dim valley and 
the household lamps up to the marching stars. ‘Yes. If my State 
called, I would do it.”’ 

“This is what will happen,”’ said Cleave. “There are times when 


a THE LONG ROLL 


a man sees clearly, and I see clearly to-day. The North does not 
intend to evacuate Fort Sumter. Instead, sooner or later, she’ll try 
to reinforce it. That will be the beginning of the end. South Caro- 
lina will reduce the fort. The North will preach a holy war. War 
there will be — whether holy or not remains to be seen. Virginia 
will be called upon to furnish her quota of troops with which to 
coerce South Carolina and the Gulf States back into the Union. 
Well — do you think she will give them ?” 

Allan gave a short laugh. “No!” 

“That is what will happen. And then — and then a greater State 
than any will be forced into secession! And then the Virginians in 
the army will come home.” 

The wood gave way to open country, softly swelling fields, willow 
copses, and clear running streams. In the crystal air the mountain 
walls seemed near at hand, above shone Orion, icily brilliant. The 
lawyer from a dim old house in a grove of oaks and the school- 
teacher from Thunder Run went on in silence for a time; then the 
latter spoke. 

“Hairston Breckinridge says that Major Cary’s niece is with him 
at Lauderdale.” 

* ves... judith Cary.’ 

“That’s the beautiful one, is n’t it ?” 

“They are all said to be beautiful — the three Greenwood Carys. 
But — Yes, that is the beautiful one.” 

He began to hum a song, and as he did so he lifted his wide soft 
hat and rode bareheaded. | 

“Tt’s strange to me,” said Allan presently, ‘‘that any one should 
be gay to-day.” 

As he spoke he glanced up at the face of the man riding beside 
him on the great bay. There was yet upon the road a faint after- 
light — enough light to reveal that there were tears on Cleave’s 
cheek. Involuntarily Allan uttered an exclamation. 

The other, breaking off his chant, quite simply put up a gaunt- 
leted hand and wiped the moisture away. ‘“Gay!’’ he repeated. 
“T’m not gay. What gave you such an idea? I tell you that though 
I’ve never been in a war, I know all about war!” 


CHAPTER V ITI 


THREE OAKS 


Run, Richard Cleave came, a little later, to his own house, 

old and not large, crowning a grassy slope above a run- 
ning stream. He left the highway, opened a five-barred gate, and 
passed between fallow fields to a second gate, opened this and, 
skirting a knoll upon which were set three gigantic oaks, rode up a 
short and grass-grown drive. It led him to the back of the house, 
and afar off his dogs began to give him welcome. When he had 
dismounted before the porch, a negro boy with a lantern took his 
horse. “Hit’s tuhnin’ powerful cold, Marse Dick!” 

“Tt is that, Jim. Give Dundee his supper at once and bring him 
around again. Down, Bugle! Down, Moira! Down, Baron!” 

The hall was cold and in semi-darkness, but through the half- 
opened door of his mother’s chamber came a gush of firelight warm 
and bright. Her voice reached him — “Richard!” He entered. She 
was sitting in a great old chair by the fire, idle for a wonder, her 
hands, fine and slender, clasped over her knees. The light struck up 
against her fair, brooding face. “‘It is late!” she said. “Late and 
cold! Come to the fire. Ailsy will have supper ready in a minute.” 

He came and knelt beside her on the braided rug. “It is always 
warm in here. Where are the children ?” 

“Down at Tullius’s cabin. — Tell me all about it. Who spoke?”’ 

Cleave drew before the fire the chair that had been his father’s, 
sank into it, and taking the ash stick from the corner, stirred the 
glowing logs. ‘Judge Allen’s Resolutions were read and carried. 
Fauquier Cary spoke — many others.” 

“Did not you ?” 

“No. They asked me to, but with so many there was no need. 
People were much moved — ” 

He broke off, sitting stirring the fire. His mother watched the 
deep hollows with him. Closely resembling as he did his long dead 


H AVING left behind him Allan Gold and the road to Thunder 


20 THE LONG ROLL 


father, the inner tie, strong and fine, was rather between him and the 
woman who had given him birth. Wedded ere she was seventeen, a 
mother at eighteen, she sat now beside her first-born, still beautiful, 
and crowned by a lovely life. She had kept her youth, and he had 
come early to a man’s responsibilities. For years now they had 
walked together, caring for the farm, which was not large, for the 
handful of servants, for the two younger children, Will and Miriam. 
The eighteen years between them was cancelled by their common 
interests, his maturity of thought, her quality of the summer time. 
She broke the silence. “What did Fauquier Cary say?” 

“He spoke strongly for patience, moderation, peace — I am going 
to Lauderdale after supper.” 

“To see Judith ?” , 

“No. To talk to Fauquier. . . . Maury Stafford is at Silver Hill.” 
He straightened himself, put down the ash stick, and rose to his feet. 
“The bell will ring directly. I’ll go upstairs for a moment.” 

Margaret Cleave put out a detaining hand. “One moment — 
Richard, are you quite, quite sure that she likes Maury Stafford so 
well?” 

“Why should she not like him? He’s a likable fellow.” 

‘So are many people. So are you.” 

Cleave gave a short and wintry laugh. “I? I am only her cousin 
— rather a dull cousin, too, who does nothing much in the law, and 
is not even a very good farmer! AmI sure? Yes, Iam sure enough!” 
His hand closed on the back of her chair; the wood shook under the 
sombre energy of his grasp. ‘Did I not see how it was last summer 
that week I spent at Greenwood? Was he not always with her? — 
supple and keen, easy and strong, with his face like a picture, with 
all the advantages I did not have — education, travel, wealth! — 
Why, Edward told me—and could I not see for myself? It was in the 
air of the place —not a servant but knew he had come a-wooing!”’ 

“But there was no engagement then. Had there been we should 
have known it.” | 

‘““No engagement then, perhaps, but certainly no discouragement! 
He was there again in the autumn. He was with her to-day.” The 
chair shook again. “And this morning Fauquier Cary, talking to 
me, laughed and said that Albemarle had set their wedding day!” 

His mother sighed. “Oh, I am sorry — sorry!” 


THREE OAKS 21 


“T should never have gone to Greenwood last summer — never 
have spent there that unhappy week! Before that it was just a 
fancy — and then I must go and let it bite into heart and brain and 
life —”’ He dropped his hand abruptly and turned to the door. 
“Well, I’ve got to try now to think only of the country! God 
knows, things have come to that pass that her sons should think 
only of her! It is winter time, Mother; the birds are n’t mating 
now — save those two — save those two!”’ 

Upstairs, in his bare, high-ceiled room, his hasty toilet made, he 
stood upon the hearth, beside the leaping fire, and looked about 
him. Of late — since the summer — everything was clarifying. 
There was at work some great solvent making into naught the dross 
of custom and habitude. The glass had turned; outlines were clearer 
than they had been, the light was strong, and striking from a 
changed angle. To-day both the sight of a face and the thought of 
an endangered State had worked to make the light intenser. His old, 
familiar room looked strange to him to-night. A tall bookcase faced 
him. He went across and stood before it, staring through the dia- 
mond panes at the backs of the books. Here were his Coke and 
Blackstone, Vattel, Henning, Kent, and Tucker, and here were other 
books of which he was fonder than of those, and here were a few 
volumes of the poets. Of them all, only the poets managed to keep 
to-night a familiar look. He took out a volume, old, tawny-backed, 
gold-lettered, and opened it at random — 


Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not, 
But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels hew, 
Cleare as the sky, withouten blame or blot — 


A bell rang below. Youthful and gay, shattering the quiet of the 
house, a burst of voices proclaimed “ the children’s” return from 
Tullius’s cabin. When, in another moment, Cleave came downstairs, 
it was to find them both in wait at the foot, illumined by the light 
from the dining-room door. Miriam laid hold of him. “Richard, 
Richard! tell me quick! Which was the greatest, Achilles or 
Hector?” 

Will, slight and fair, home for the holidays from Lexington and, 
by virtue of his cadetship in the Virginia Military Institute, an 
authority on most things, had a movement of impatience. “Girls 


22 THE LONG ROLL 


are so stupid! Tell her it was Hector, and let’s go to supper! She’ll 
believe you.” 

Within the dining-room, at the round table, before the few pieces 
of tall, beaded silver and the gilt-banded china, while Mehalah the 
waitress brought the cakes from the kitchen and the fire burned 
softly on the hearth below the Saint Memin of a general and law- 
giver, talk fell at once upon the event of the day, the meeting that 
had passed the Botetourt Resolutions. Miriam, with her wide, sen- 
sitive mouth, her tip-tilted nose, her hazel eyes, her air of some 
quaint, bright garden flower swaying on its stem, was for war and 
music, and both her brothers to become generals. ‘‘Or.Richard can 
be the general, and you be a cavalryman like Cousin Fauquier! 
Richard can fight like Napoleon and you may fight like Ney!” 

The cadet stiffened. “Thank you for nothing, Missy! Anyhow, I 
shan’t sulk in my tents like your precious Achilles — just for a girl! 
Richard! ‘Old Jack’ says —” 

“T wish, Will,” murmured his mother, ‘‘that you’d say ‘Major 
Jackson.’ ” 

The boy laughed. ‘‘‘Old Jack’ is what we call him, ma’am! The 
other would n’t be respectful. He’s never ‘Major Jackson’ except 
when he’s trying to teach natural philosophy. On the drill 
ground he’s ‘Old Jack.’ Richard, he says — Old Jack says — that 
not a man since Napoleon has understood the use of cavalry.” 

Cleave, sitting with his eyes upon the portrait of his grandfather, 
answered dreamily: ‘‘Old Jack is probably in the right of it, Will. 
Cavalry is a great arm, but I shall choose the artillery.” 

His mother set down her coffee cup with a little noise, Miriam 
shook her hair out of her eyes and came back from her own dream of 
the story she was reading, and Will turned as sharply as if he were on 
the parade ground at Lexington. 

“You don’t think, then, that it is just all talk, Richard! You are 
sure that we’re going to fight!” 

“You fight!” cried Miriam. ‘Why, you are n’t sixteen!” 

Will flared up. ‘‘Plenty of soldiers have died at sixteen, Missy! 
‘Old Jack’ knows, if you don’t —”’ 

“Children, children!’ said Margaret Cleave, in a quivering voice. 
“Tt is enough to know that not a man of this family but would fight 
now for Virginia, just as they fought eighty odd years ago! Yes, and 


THREE OAKS 23 


we women did our part then, and we would do it now! But I pray 
God, night and day — and Miriam, you should pray too — that 
this storm will not burst! As for you two who’ve always been shel- 
tered and fed, who’ve never had a blow struck you, who’ve grown 
like tended plants in a garden — you don’t know what war is! It’s 
a great and deep Cup of Trembling! It’s a scourge that reaches the 
backs of all! It’s universal destruction — and the gift that the 
world should pray for is to build in peace! That is true, is n’t it, 
Richard ?” 

“Yes, it is true,’’ said Richard. “Don’t, Will,” as the boy began 
tospeak. “Don’t let’s talk any more about it to-night. After all, a 
deal of storms go by — and it’s a wise man who can read Time’s 
order-book.”’ He rose from the table. “It’s like the fable. The 
King may die, the Ass may die, the Philosopher may die — and 
next Christmas may be the peacefullest on record! I’m going to 
ride to Lauderdale for a little while, and, if you like, I’ll ask 
about that shotgun for you.” 

A few minutes later and he was out on the starlit road to Lauder- 
dale. As he rode he thought, not of the Botetourt Resolutions, nor 
of Fauquier Cary, nor of Allan Gold, nor of the supper table at Three 
Oaks, nor of a case which he must fight through at the court house 
three days hence, but of Judith Cary. Dundee’s hoofs beat it out on 
the frosty ground. Judith Cary — Judith Cary — Judith Cary! He 
thought of Greenwood, of the garden there, of a week last summer, 
of Maury Stafford — Stafford whom at first meeting he had thought 
most likable! He did not think him so to-night, there at Silver Hill, 
ready to go to Lauderdale to-morrow! — Judith Cary — Judith 
Cary — Judith Cary. He saw Stafford beside her — Stafford beside 
her — Stafford beside her — 

“Tf she love him,” said Cleave, half aloud, “‘he must be worthy. 
I will not be so petty nor so bitter! I wish her happiness. — Judith 
Cary — Judith Cary. Tf she love him —” 

To the left a little stream brawled through frosty meadows; to the 
right rose a low hill black with cedars. Along the southern horizon 
stretched the Blue Ridge, a wall of the Titans, a rampart in the 
night. The line was long and clean; behind it was an effect of light, 
a steel-like gleaming. Above blazed the winter stars. ‘If she love 
him — if she love him —” He determined that to-night at Lauder- 


24 THE LONG ROLL 


dale he would try to see her alone for a minute. He would find out 
-— he must find out — if there were any doubt he would resolve it. 

The air was very still and clear. He heard a carriage before him 
on the road. It was coming toward him — a horseman, too, evi- 
dently riding beside it. Just ahead the road crossed a bridge — not a 
good place for passing in the night-time. Cleave drew a little aside, 
reining in Dundee. With a hollow rumbling the carriage passed the 
streams. It proved to be an old-fashioned coach with lamps, drawn 
by strong, slow grey horses. Cleave recognized the Silver Hill equi- 
page. Silver Hill must have been supping with Lauderdale. Imme- 
diately he divined who was the horseman. The carriage drew along- 
side, the lamps making a small ring of light. “‘Good-evening, Mr. 
Stafford!” said Cleave. The other raised his hat. ‘‘ Mr. Cleave, is 
it not? Good-evening, sir!”” A voice spoke within the coach. ‘‘It’s 
Richard Cleave now! Stop, Ephraim!”’ 

The slow grey horses came to a stand. Cleave dismounted, and 
came, hat in hand, to the coach window. The mistress of Silver Hill, 
a young married woman, frank and sweet, put out a hand. “ Good- 
evening, Mr. Cleave! You are on your way to Lauderdale? My 
sister and Maury Stafford and I are carrying Judith off to Silver Hill 
for the night. — She wants to give you a message —”’ 

She moved aside and Judith took her place — Judith in fur cap 
and cloak, her beautiful face just lit by the coach lamp. ‘“‘It’s not a 
message, Richard. I—TI did not know that you were coming to 
Lauderdale to-night. Had I known it, I[— Give my love, my dear 
love, to Cousin Margaret. I would have come to Three Oaks, 
only —”’ 

“You are going home to-morrow?”’ 

“Yes. Fauquier wishes to get back to Albemarle —” 

“Will you start from Lauderdale?” 

“No, from Silver Hill. He will come by for me. But had I 
known,” said Judith clearly, “had I known that you would ride to 
Lauderdale to-night —” 

“You would dutifully have stayed to see a cousin,’ thought 
Cleave in savage pain. He spoke quietly, in the controlled but vi- 
brant voice he had used on the hilltop. ‘I am sorry that I will not 
see you to-night. I will ride on, however, and talk to Fauquier. You 
will give my love, will you not, to all my cousins at Greenwood? I 


THREE OAKS 25 


do not forget how good all were to me last summer! — Good-bye, 
Judith.” 

She gave him her hand. It trembled a little in her glove. ‘Come 
again to Greenwood! Winter or summer, it will be glad to see you! 
— Good-bye, Richard.” 

Fur cap, cloak, beautiful face, drew back. “Go on, Ephraim!” 
said the mistress of Silver Hill. 

The slow grey horses put themselves into motion, the coach 
passed on. Maury Stafford waited until Cleave had remounted. 
“Tt has been an exciting day!” he said. “I think that we are at the 
parting of the ways.” 

“T think so. You will be at Silver Hill throughout the week?” 

“No, I think that I, too, will ride toward Albemarle to-morrow. 
It is worth something to be with Fauquier Cary a little longer.” 

“That is quite true,” said Cleave slowly. “I do not ride to Albe- 
marle to-morrow, and so I will pursue my road to Lauderdale and 
make the most of him to-night!’’ He turned his horse, lifted his 
hat. Stafford did likewise. They parted, and Cleave presently 
heard the rapid hoofbeat overtake the Silver Hill coach and at once 
change to a slower rhythm. “ Now he is speaking with her through 
the window!” The sound of wheel and hoof died away. Cleave 
shook Dundee’s reins and went on toward Lauderdale. Judith Cary 
— Judith Cary — There are other a in life than love — other 
things than love — other things than love. . . . Judith Cary — Judith 
Cary. 

At Thre: Oaks Margaret Cleave rested upon her couch by the fire. 
Miriam was curled on the rug with a book, an apple, and Tabitha 
the cat. Will mended a ote te and discoursed of “Old Jack.” 
“Tt’s afact,ma’am! Wilson worked the problem, gave the solution, 
and got from Old Jack a regular withering up! They'll all tell you, 
ma’am, that he excels in withering up! “You are wrong, Mr. Wil- 
son,’ says he, in that tone of his —dry as tinder, and makes you stop 
like a musket-shot! ‘You are always wrong. Go to your seat, sir.’ 
Well, old Wilson went, of course, and sat there so angry he was 
shivering. You see he was right, and he knew it. Well, the day went 
on about as usual. It set in to snow, and by night there was what a 
western man we’ve got calls a ‘blizzard.’ Barracks like an ice house, 
and snowing so you could n’t see across the Campus! ’T was so 


26 THE LONG ROLL 


deadly cold and the lights so dismal that we rather looked forward 
to taps. Up comes an orderly. ‘Mr. Wilson to the Commandant’s 
office!’ — Well, old Wilson looked startled, for he had n’t done any- 
thing; but off he marches, the rest of us predicting hanging. Well, 
whom d’ ye reckon he found in the Commandant’s office?” 

“Old Jack?” 

“Good marksmanship! It was Old Jack — snow all over, snow 
on his coat, on his big.boots, on his beard, on his cap. He lives most 
a mile from the Institute, and the weather was bad, sure enough! 
Well, old Wilson did n’t know what to expect — most likely hot 
shot, grape and canister with musketry fire thrown in — but he 
saluted and stood fast. ‘Mr. Wilson,’ says Old Jack, ‘upon return- 
ing home and going over with closed eyes after supper as is my cus- 
tom the day’s work, I discovered that you were right this morning 
and I was wrong. Your solution was correct. I felt it to be your due 
that I should tell you of my mistake as soon as I discovered it. I 
apologise for the statement that you were always wrong. You may 
go, sir.’ Well, old Wilson never could tell what he said, but anyhow 
he accepted the apology, and saluted, and got out of the room some- 
how and back to barracks, and we breathed on the window and 
made a place through which we watched Old Jack over the Campus, 
ploughing back to Mrs. Jack through the blizzard! So you see, 
ma’am, things like that make us lenient to Old Jack sometimes — 
though he is awfully dull and has very peculiar notions.” 

Margaret Cleave sat up. “Is that you, Richard?” Miriam put 
down Tabitha and rose to her knees. “Did you see Cousin Judith? 
Is she as beautiful as ever?”’ Will hospitably gave up the big chair. 
“You must have galloped Dundee both ways! Did you ask about 
the shotgun?” 

Cleave took his seat at the foot of his mother’s couch. “ Yes, Will, 
you may have it. — Fauquier sent his love to you, Mother, and to 
Miriam. They leave for Greenwood to-morrow.”’ 

“And Cousin Judith,” persisted Miriam. ‘‘ What did she have on? 
Did she sing to you?” 

Cleave picked up her fallen book and smoothed the leaves. “She 
was not there. The Silver Hill people had taken her for the night. 
I passed them on the road. . . . There’ll be thick ice, Will, if this 
weather lasts.” 


THREE OAKS 27 


Later, when good-night had been said and he was alone in his bare, 
high-ceiled room, he looked, not at his law books nor at the poet’s 
words, left lying on the table, but he drew a chair before the fire- 
place, and from its depths he raised his eyes to his grandfather’s 
sword slung above the mantel-shelf. He sat there, long, with the 
sword before him; then he rose, took a book from the case, trimmed 
the candles, and for an hour read of the campaigns of Fabius and 
Hannibal. 


CHAPTER IV 
GREENWOOD 


HE April sunshine, streaming in at the long windows, filled 

the Greenwood drawing-room with dreamy gold. It lit the 

ancient wall-paper where the shepherds and shepherdesses 

wooed between garlands of roses, and it aided the tone of time 
among the portraits. The boughs of peach and cherry blossoms in 
the old potpourri jars made it welcome, and the dark, waxed floor 
let it lie in faded pools. Miss Lucy Cary was glad to see it as she 
sat by the fire knitting fine white wool into a sacque for a baby. 
There was a fire of hickory, but it burned low, as though it knew the 
winter was over. The knitter’s needles glinted in the sunshine. She 
was forty-eight and unmarried, and it was her delight to make beau- 
tiful, soft little sacques and shoes and coverlets for every actual 
or prospective baby in all the wide circle of her kindred and friends. 
A tap at the door, and the old Greenwood butler entered with the 
mail-bag. Miss Lucy, laying down her knitting, took it from him 
with eager fingers. Place a la poste —in eighteen hundred and sixty- 
one! She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the 
table beside her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and vener- 
able piece of grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners 
and great family pride, stood back a little and waited for directions. 
Miss Lucy, taking up one after another the contents of the bag, 
made her comments half aloud. ‘‘Newspapers, newspapers! No- 
thing but the twelfth and Fort Sumter! The Whig. — ‘South Caro- 
lina is too hot-headed! — but when all’s said, the North remains the 
aggressor.’ The Examiner.— ‘Seward’s promises are not worth the 
paper they are written upon.’ ‘Faith as to Sumter fully kept — wait 
and see.’ That which was seen was a fleet of eleven vessels, with two 
hundred and eighty-five guns and twenty-four hundred men — 
‘carrying provisions to a starving garrison!’ Have done with cant, and 
welcome open war! The Enquirer. — ‘Virginia will still succeed in 
mediating. Virginia from her curule chair, tranquil and fast in the 


GREENWOOD 29 


Union, will persuade, will reconcile these differences!’ Amen to 
that!” said Miss Lucy, and took up another bundle. ‘‘ The Staunton 
Gazette — The Farmer's Magazine —The Literary Messenger — 
My Blackwood — Julius!” 

““Yaas, Miss Lucy.” 

“Julius, the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood will be here for supper 
and to spend the night. Let Car’line know.”’ 

“Yaas, Miss Lucy. Easter’s Jim hab obsarved to me dat Marse 
Edward am conducin’ home a gent’man from Kentucky.” 

“Very well,” said Miss Lucy, still sorting. ‘The Winchester 
Times—The Baltimore Sun.—The mint’s best, Julius, in the 
lower bed. I walked by there this morning. — Letters for my bro- 
ther! I’ll readdress these, and Easter’s Jim must take them to 
town in time for the Richmond train.” 

“Yaas, Miss Lucy. Easter’s Jim hab imported dat Marse Berke- 
ley Cyarter done recompense him on de road dis mahnin’ ter know 
when Marster’s comin’ home.” 

“Just as soon,” said Miss Lucy, “‘as the Convention brings every- 
body to their senses. — Three letters for Edward — one in young 
Beaufort Porcher’s writing. Now we’ll hear the Charleston version 
— probably he fired the first shot! — A note for me. — Julius, the 
Palo Alto ladies will stop by for dinner to-morrow. Tell Car’line.”’ 

“Yaas, Miss Lucy.” 

Miss Lucy took up a thick, bluish envelope. ‘From Fauquier at 
last — from the Red River.” She opened the letter, ran rapidly over 
the half-dozen sheets, then laid them aside for a more leisurely pe- 
rusal. “It’s one of his swift, light, amusing letters! He has n’t heard 
about Sumter. — There’ll be a message for you, Julius. There 
always is.” 

Julius’s smile was as bland as sunshine. ‘‘Yaas, Miss Lucy. I 
’spects dar’ll be some excommunication fer me. Marse Fauquier 
sho’ do favour Old Marster in dat. — He don’ never forgit! ’Pears ter 
me he’d better come home — all dis heah congratulatin’ backwards 
an’ forwards wid gunpowder over de kintry! Gunpowder gwine 
burn ef folk git reckless!” 

Miss Lucy sighed. “It will that, Julius, —it’s burning now. 
Edward from Sally Hampton. More Charleston news! — One for 
Molly, three for Unity, five for Judith —” 


30 THE LONG ROLL 


“Miss Judith jes’ sont er ’lumination by one of de chillern at de 
gate. She an’ Marse Maury Stafford ’ll be back by five. Dey ain’ 
gwine ride furder’n Monticello.” 

“Very well. Mr. Stafford will be here to supper, then. Hairston 
Breckinridge, too, I imagine. Tell Car’line.” 

Miss Lucy readdressed the letters for her brother, a year older 
than herself, and the master of Greenwood, a strong Whig influence 
in his section of the State, and now in Richmond, in the Convention 
there, speaking earnestly for amity, a better understanding between 
Sovereign States, and a happily restored Union. His wife, upon 
whom he had lavished an intense and chivalric devotion, was long 
dead, and for years his sister had taken the head of his table and 
cared like a mother for his children. 

She sat now, at work, beneath the portrait of her own mother. As 
good as gold, as true as steel, warm-hearted and large-natured, active, 
capable, and of a sunny humour, she kept her place in the hearts of 
all who knew her. Not a great beauty as had been her mother, she 
was yet a handsome woman, clear brunette with bright, dark eyes 
and a most likable mouth. Miss Lucy never undertook to explain 
why she had not married, but her brothers thought they knew. She 
finished the letters and gave them to Julius. ‘Let Easter’s Jim 
take them right away, in time for the evening train. — Have you 
seen Miss Unity?” 

“Yaas, ma’am. Miss Unity am in de flower gyarden wid Marse 
Hairston Breckinridge. Dey’re training roses.”’ 

“Where is Miss Molly?” 

“Miss Molly am in er reverence over er big book in de library.” 

The youngest Miss Cary’s voice floated in from the hall. “No, 
I’m not, Uncle Julius. Open the door wider, please!’’ Julius obeyed, 
and she entered the drawing-room with a great atlas outspread upon 
her arms. “‘ Aunt Lucy, where are all these places? I can’t find them. 
The Island and Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, 
and the rest of them! I wish when bombardments and surrenders 
and exciting things happen they’d happen nearer home!” 

“Child, child!” cried Miss Lucy, “don’t you ever say such a 
thing as that again! The way you young people talk is enough to 
bring down a judgment upon us! It’s like Sir Walter crying ‘Bonny 
bonny!’ to the jagged lightnings. You are eighty years away from a 


GREENWOOD 31 


great war, and you don’t know what you are talking about, and may 
you never be any nearer! — Yes, Julius, that’s all. Tell Easter’s 
Jim to go right away. — Now, Molly, this is the island, and here is 
Fort Moultrie and here Fort Sumter. I used to know Charleston, 
when I was a girl. I can see now the Battery, and the blue sky, and 
the roses, — and the roses.” 

She took up her knitting and made a few stitches mechanically, 
then laid it down and applied herself to Fauquier Cary’s letter. 
Molly, ensconced in a window, was already busy with her own. 
Presently she spoke. ‘Miriam Cleave says that Will passed his 
examination higher than any one.” 

“That is good!” said Miss Lucy. “They all have fine minds — 
the Cleaves. What else does she say?” 

“She says that Richard has given her a silk dress for her birthday, 
and she’s going to have it made with angel sleeves, and wear a hoop 
with it. She’s sixteen — just like me.” 

“Richard’s a good brother.”’ 

“She says that Richard has gone to Richmond — something 
about arms for his Company of Volunteers. Aunt Lucy —” 

“Yes, dear.” 

“T think that Richard loves Judith.” 

“Molly, Molly, stop romancing!”’ 

“T am not romancing. I don’t believe in it. That week last sum- 
mer he used to watch her and Mr. Stafford — and there was a look 
in his eyes like the knight’s in the ‘ Arcadia ’"—” 

“Molly! Molly!” 

“And everybody knew that Mr. Stafford was a suitor. J knew it 
— Easter told me. And everybody thought that Judith was going 
to make him happy, only she does n’t seem to have done so — at 
least, not yet. And there was the big tournament, and Richard 
and Dundee took all the rings, though I know that Mr. Stafford 
had expected to, and Judith let Richard crown her queen, but she 
looked just as pale and still! and Richard had a line between his 
brows, and I think he thought she would rather have had the Maid 
of Honour’s crown that Mr. Stafford won and gave to just a little 
girl ee 

“Molly, I am going to lock up every poetry book in the house —”’ 

“And that was one day, and the next morning Richard looked 


32 THE LONG ROLL 


stern and fine, and rodeaway. He is n’t really handsome — not like 
Edward, that is — only he has a way of looking so. And Judith —” 

“Molly, you’re uncanny —”’ 

“T’m not uncanny. I can’t help seeing. And the night after the 
tournament I slept in Judith’s room, and I woke up three times, and 
each time there was Judith still sitting in the window, in the moon- 
light, and the roses Richard had crowned her with beside her in 
grandmother’s Lowestoft bowl. And each time I asked her, ‘Why 
“don’t you come to bed, Judith?’ and each time she said, ‘I’m not 
sleepy.’ Then in the morning Richard rode away, and the next day 
was Sunday, and Judith went to church both morning and evening, 
and that night she took so long to say her prayers she must have 
been praying for the whole world —” | 

Miss Lucy rose with energy. “Stop, Molly! I should n’t have let 
you ever begin. It’s not kind to watch people like that.” 

“T was n’t watching Judith,” said Molly. “I’d scorn to dosucha 
thing! I was just seeing. And I never said a word about her and 
Richard until this instant when the sunshine came in somehow and 
started it. And I don’t know that she likes Richard any more. I think 
she’s trying hard to like Mr. Stafford — he wants her to so much!” 

“Stop talking, honey, and don’t have so many fancies, and don’t 
read so much poetry! — Who is it coming up the drive?” 

“Tt’s Mr. Wood on his old grey horse — like a nice, quiet knight 
out of the ‘Faery Queen.’ Did n’t you ever notice, Aunt Lucy, how 
everybody really belongs in a book?” 

On the old, broad, pillared porch the two found the second Miss 
Cary and young Hairston Breckinridge. Apparently in training the 
roses they had discovered a thorn. They sat in silence — at oppo- 
site sides of the steps — nursing the recollection. Breckinridge 
regarded the toe of his boot, Unity the distant Blue Ridge, until, Mr. 
Corbin Wood and his grey horse coming into view between the oaks, 
they regarded him. 

“The air,” said Miss Lucy, from the doorway, “is turning cold. 
What did you fall out about?” 

“South Carolina,’ answered Unity, with serenity. “It’s not 
unlikely that our grandchildren will be falling out about South 
Carolina. Mr. Breckinridge is a Democrat and a fire-eater. Any- 
how, Virginia is not going to secede just because he wants her to!” 


GREENWOOD 33 


The angry young disciple of Calhoun opposite was moved toreply, 
but at that moment Mr. Corbin Wood arriving before the steps, he 
must perforce run down to greet him and help him dismount. A 
negro had hardly taken the grey, and Mr. Wood was yet speaking to 
the ladies upon the porch, when two other horsemen appeared, 
mounted on much more fiery steeds, and coming at a gait that 
approached the ancient ‘‘planter’s pace.” ‘Edward and Hilary 
Preston,” said Miss Lucy, “and away down the road, I see Judith 
and Mr. Stafford.” 

The two in advance riding up the drive beneath the mighty oaks 
and dismounting, the gravel space before the white-pillared porch 
became a scene of animation, with beautiful, spirited horses, leaping 
dogs, negro servants, and gay horsemen. Edward Cary sprang up 
the steps. “Aunt Lucy, you remember Hilary Preston! — and this 
is my sister Unity, Preston, — the Quakeress we call her! and this 
is Molly, the little one! — Mr. Wood, I am very glad to see you, sir! 
Aunt Lucy! Virginia Page, the two Masons, and Nancy Carter 
are coming over. after supper with Cousin William, and I fancy 
that Peyton and Dabney and Rives and Lee will arrive about the 
same time. We might have a little dance, eh? Here’s Stafford 
with Judith, now!” 

In the Greenwood drawing-room, after candle-light, they had the 
little dance. Negro fiddlers, two of them, born musicians, came 
from the quarter. They were dressed in an elaborate best, they were 
as suavely happy as tropical children, and beamingly eager for the 
credit in the dance, asin all things else, of “de fambly.”” Down came 
the bow upon the strings, out upon the April night floated ““ Money 
Musk!” All the furniture was pushed aside, the polished floor gave 
back the lights. From the walls men and women of the past smiled 
upon a stage they no longer trod, and between garlands of roses the 
shepherds and shepherdesses pursued their long, long courtship. 
The night was mild, the windows partly open, the young girls danc- 
ing in gowns of summery stuff. Their very wide skirts were printed 
over with pale flowers, their bodices were cut low, with a fall of lace 
against the white bosom. The hair was worn smooth and drawn 
over the ear, with on either side a bright cluster of blossoms. The fid- 
dlers played “ Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre.” Laughter, quick and 
gay, or low and ripplingly sweet, flowed through the old room. The 


34 THE LONG ROLL 


dances were all square, for there existed in the country a prejudice 
against round dancing. Once Edward Cary pushed friend down on 
the piano stool, and whirled with Nancy Carter into the middle of 
the room in a waltz. But Miss Lucy shook her head at her nephew, 
and Cousin William gazed sternly at Nancy, and the fiddlers looked 
scandalized. Scipio, the old, old one, who could remember the 
Lafayette ball, held his bow awfully poised. 

Judith Cary, dressed in a soft, strange, dull blue, and wearing a 
little crown of rosy flowers, danced along like the lady of Saint 
Agnes Eve. Maury Stafford marked how absent was her gaze, and 
he hoped that she was dreaming of their ride that afternoon, of the 
clear green woods and the dogwood stars, and of some words that he 
had said. In these days he was hoping against hope. Well off and 
well-bred, good to look at, pleasant of speech, at times indolent, at 
times ardent, a little silent on the whole, and never failing to match 
the occasion with just the right shade of intelligence, a certain grip 
and essence in this man made itself felt like the firm bed of a river 
beneath the flowing water. He was not of Albemarle; he was of a 
tide-water county, but he came to Albemarle and stayed with kin- 
dred, and no one doubted that he strove for an Albemarle bride. It 
was the opinion of the county people that he would win her. It was 
hard to see why he should not. He was desperately in love, and far 
too determined to take the first ‘ No” foran answer. Until the last 
eight months it had been his own conclusion that he would win. 

The old clock in the hall struck ten; in an interval between the 
dances Judith slipped away. Stafford wished to follow her, but 
Cousin William held him like the Ancient Mariner and talked of the 
long past on the Eastern Shore. Judith, entering the library, came 
upon the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood, deep in a great chair anda 
calf-bound volume. “Come in, come in, Judith my dear, and tell 
me about the dance.” 

“Tt is a pretty dance,” said Judith. ‘‘Do you think it would be 
very wrong of you to watch it ?” 

Mr. Wood, the long thin fingers of one hand lightly touching the 
long thin fingers of the other hand, considered the matter. “Why, 
no,” he said in a mellow and genial voice. “‘ Why, no — itis always 
hard for me to think that anything beautiful is wrong. It is this way. 
I go into the drawing-room and watch you. It is, as you say, a very 


GREENWOOD 35 


pretty sight! But if I find it so and still keep a long face, I am to 
myself something of a hypocrite. And if I testify my delight, if lam 
absorbed in your evolutions, and think only of springtime and 
growing things, and show my thought, then to every one of you, and 
indeed to myself too, my dear, Iam something out of my character! 
So it seems better to sit here and read Jeremy Taylor.” 

“You have the book upside down,” said Judith softly. Her old 
friend put on his glasses, gravely looked, and reversed the volume. 
He laughed, and then he sighed. “I was thinking of the country, 
Judith. It’s the only book that is interesting now — and the recital’s 
tragic, my dear; the recital’s tragic!” 

From the hall came Edward Cary’s voice, “ Judith, Judith, we 
want you for the reel!”’ 

In the drawing-room the music quickened. Scipio played with all 
his soul, his eyes uprolled, his lips parted, his woolly head nodding, 
his vast foot beating time; young Eli, black and shining, seconded 
him ably; without the doors and windows gathered the house serv- 
ants, absorbed, admiring, laughing without noise. The April wind, 
fragrant of greening forests, ploughed land, and fruit trees, blew in 
and out the long, thin curtains. Faster went the bow upon the 
fiddle, the room became more brilliant and more dreamy. The 
flowers in the old, old blue jars grew pinker, mistier, the lights had 
halos, the portraits smiled forthright; but from greater distances, 
the loud ticking of the clock without the door changed to a great 
rhythm, as though Time were using a violin string. The laughter 
swelled, waves of brightness went through the ancient room. They 
danced the “ Virginia Reel.”’ 

Miss Lucy, sitting beside Cousin William on the sofa, raised her 
head. “Horses are coming up the drive!”’ 

“That’s not unusual,” said Cousin William, with a smile. “Why 
do you look so startled ?” 

“T don’t know. I thought — but that’s not possible.”” Miss Lucy 
half rose, then took her seat again. Cousin William listened. ‘‘The 
air’s very clear to-night, and there must be an echo. It does sound 
like a great body of horsemen coming out of the distance.” 

“Balance corners!” called Eli. ‘Swing yo’ partners! — 
Sachay !” 

The music drew to a height, the lights burned with a fuller power, 


36 THE LONG ROLL 


the odour of the flowers spread, subtle and intense. The dancers 
moved more and more quickly. “There are only three horses,” said 
Cousin William, ‘‘two in front and one behind. Two gentlemen and 
a servant. Now they are crossing the little bridge. Shall I go see 
who they are?” 

Miss Lucy rose. Outside a dog had begun an excited and joyous 
barking. “That’s Gelert! It’s my brother he is welcoming!” 
From the porch came a burst of negro voices. “Who dat comin’ up 
de drive? Who dat, Gelert? — Dat’s marster! — Go ’way, ’ooman! 
don’ tell me he in Richmon’! Dat’s marster!”’ 

The reel ended suddenly. There was a sound of dismounting, a 
step upon the porch, a voice. “Father, father!”’ cried Judith, and 
ran into the hall. 

A minute later the master of Greenwood, his children about him, 
entered the drawing-room. Behind him came Richard Cleave. 
There was a momentary confusion of greeting; it passed, and from 
the two men, travel-stained, fatigued, pale with some suppressed 
emotion, there sped to the gayer company a subtle wave of expect- 
ation and alarm. Miss Lucy was the first whom it reached. “What 
is it, brother?” she said quickly. Cousin William followed, ‘For 
God’s sake, Cary, what has happened?”’ Edward spoke from beside 
the piano, “Has it come, father?”’ With his words his hand fell 
upon the keys, suddenly and startlingly upon the bass. 

The vibrations died away. “Yes, it has come, Edward,” said the 
master. Holding up his hand for silence, he moved to the middle of 
the room, and stood there, beneath the lit candles, the swinging 
prisms of the chandelier. Peale’s portrait of his father hung upon the 
wall. The resemblance was strong between the dead and the living. 

“Be quiet, every one,” he said now, speaking very quietly him- 
self. ‘Is all the household here? Open the window wide, Julius. 
Let the house servants come inside. If there are men and women from 
the quarter on the porch, tell them to come closer, so that all may 
hear.” Julius opened the long windows, the negroes came in, Mammy 
in her turban, Easter and Chloe the seamstresses, Car’line the cook, 
the housemaids, the dining-room boys, the young girls who waited 
upon the daughters of the house, Isham the coachman, Shirley the 
master’s body-servant, Edward’s boy Jeames, and the nondescript 
half dozen who helped the others. The ruder sort upon the porch, 


GREENWOOD kg 


“‘outdoor’’ negroes drawn by the music and the spectacle from the 
quarter, approached the windows. Together they made a back- 
ground, dark and exotic, splashed with bright colour, for the Aryan 
stock ranged to the front. The drawing-room was filled. Mr. Corbin 
Wood had come noiselessly in from the library, none was missing. 
Guests, family, and servants stood motionless. There was that in 
the bearing of the master which seemed, in the silence, to detach 
itself, and to come toward them like an emanation, cold, pure, and 
quiet, determined and imposing. He spoke. “I supposed that you 
had heard the news. Along the railroad and in Charlottesville it 
was known; there were great crowds. I see it has not reached you. 
Mr. Lincoln has called for seventy-five thousand troops with which 
to procure South Carolina and the Gulf States’ return into the 
Union. He—the North — demands of Virginia eight thousand 
men to be used for this purpose. She will not give them. We have 
fought long and patiently for peace; now we fight no more on that 
field. Matters have brought me for a few hours to Albemarle. To- 
morrow I return to Richmond, to the Convention, to do that which 
I never thought to do, to give my voice for the secession of Vir- 
ginia.”’ 

There was a general movement throughout the room. ‘“‘So!”’ said 
Corbin Wood very softly. Cousin William rose from the sofa, drew 
a long breath, and smote his hands together. “It had to come, Cary, 
it had to come! North and South, we’ve pulled in different direc- 
tions for sixty years! The cord had to snap.”” From among the awed 
servants came the voice of old Isham the coachman, ‘‘‘ Secession!’ 
What dat wuhd ‘Secession,’ marster ?” 

“That word,” answered Warwick Cary, “means, Isham, that 
Virginia leaves of her free will a Union that she entered of her free 
will. The terms of that Union have been broken; she cannot, within 
it, preserve her integrity, her dignity, and her liberty. Therefore she 
uses the right which she reserved — the right of self-preservation. 
Unterrified she entered the Union, unterrified she leaves it.” 

He paused, standing in the white light of the candles, among his 
children, kinsmen, friends, and slaves. To the last, if ingrained affec- 
tion, tolerance, and understanding, quiet guidance, patient care, a 
kindly heart, a ready ear, a wise and simple dealing with a simple, 
not wise folk, are true constituents of friendship, he was then their 


38 THE LONG ROLL 


friend as well as their master. They with all the room hung now 
upon his words. The light wind blew the curtains out like streamers, 
the candles flickered, petals from the blossoms in the jars fell on the 
floor, the clock that had ticked in the hall for a hundred years struck 
eleven. ‘There will be war,” said the master. ‘‘There should not 
be, but there will be. How long it will last, how deadly its nature, no 
man can tell! The North has not thought us in earnest, but the 
North is mistaken. We are in earnest. War will be for us a desperate 
thing. We are utterly unprepared; we are seven million against 
twenty million, an agricultural country against a manufacturing 
one. We have little shipping, they have much. They will gain com- 
mand of the sea. If we can get our cotton to Eurcpe we will have 
gold; therefore, if they can block our ports they will do it. There are 
those who think the powers will intervene and that we will have 
England or France for our ally. I am not of them. The odds are 
greatly against us. We have struggled for peace; apparently we can- 
not have it; now we will fight for the conviction that is in us. It will 
be for us a war of defence, with the North for the invader, and Vir- 
ginia will prove the battle-ground. I hold it very probable that there 
are men here to-night who will die in battle. You women are going 
to suffer — to suffer more than we. I think of my mother and of my 
wife, and I know that you will neither hold us back nor murmur. All 
that is courageous, all that is heroically devoted, Virginia expects 
and will receive from you.” He turned to face more fully the crowd- 
ing negroes. ‘‘To every man and woman of you here, not the less 
my friends that you are called my servants, emancipated at my 
death, every one of you, by that will which I read to you years 
ago, each of you having long known that you have but to ask for 
your freedom in my lifetime to have it — to you all I speak. Julius, 
Shirley, Isham, Scipio, Mammy, and the rest of you, there are hard 
times coming! My son and I will go to war. Much will be left in 
your trust. As I and mine have tried to deal by you, so do you deal 
by us —” 

Shirley raised his voice. ‘‘Don’ leave nothin’ in trus’ ter me, 
marster! Kase I’s gwine wid you! Sho! Don’ I know dat when 
gent’men fight dey gwine want dey bes’ shu’t, an dey hat breshed 
jes’ right! I’se gwine wid you!”’ A face as dark as charcoal, with 
rolling eyes, looked over mammy’s shoulder. ‘Ain’ Marse Edward 


GREENWOOD 39 


gwine? ’Cose he gwine! Den Jeames gwine, too!”” A murmuring 
sound came from the band of servants. They began to rock them- 
selves, to strike with the tongue the roof of the mouth, to work 
toward a camp-meeting excitement. Out on the porch Big Mimy, 
the washerwoman, made herself heard. “‘ Des’ let um dar ter come 
fightin’ Greenwood folk! Des’ let me hab at um with er tub er hot 
water!” Scipio, old and withered as a last year’s reed, began to 
sway violently. Suddenly he broke into a chant. ‘Ain’ I done 
heard about hit er million times? Dar wuz Gineral Lafayette an’ dar 
wuz Gineral Rochambeau, an’ dar wuz Gineral Washington! An’ dar 
wuz Light Horse Harry Lee, an’ dar wuz Marse Fauquier Cary dat 
wuz marster’s gran’father, an’ Marse Edward Churchill! An’ dey 
took de swords, an’ dey made to stack de ahms, an’ dey druv — an’ 
dey druv King Pharaoh into de sea! Ain’ dey gwine ter do hit 
ergain? Tell me dat! Ain’ dey gwine ter do hit ergain?”’ 

The master signed with his hand. “I trust you — one and all. 
I’ll speak to you again before I go away to-morrow, but now we’ll 
say good-night. Good-night, Mammy, Isham, Scipio, Easter, all of 
you!” 

They went, one by one, each with his bow or her curtsy. 
Mammy paused a moment to deliver her pronunciamento. “ Don’ 
you fret, marster! I ain’ gwine let er soul feck one er my chillern!”’ 
Julius followed her. ‘“Dat’s so, marster! An’ Gawd Ermoughty 
knows I’se gwine always prohibit jes’ de same care ob de fambly 
an’ de silver!” 

When they were gone came the leave-taking of the guests, of all 
who were not to sleep that night at Greenwood. Maury Stafford 
was to stay, and Mr. Corbin Wood. Of those going Cousin William 
was the only one of years; the others were all young, — young men, 
young women on the edge of an unthought-of experience, on the 
brink of a bitter, tempestuous, wintry sea. They did not see it so; 
there was danger, of course, but they thought of splendour and hero- 
ism, of trumpet calls and waving banners. They were much excited; 
the young girls half frightened, the men wild to be at home, with 
plans for volunteering. ‘Good-bye, and good-bye, and good-bye 
again! and when it’s all over —it will be over in three months, 
will it not, sir? — we’ll finish the “ Virginia Reel!’” 

The large, old coach and the saddle horses were brought around. 


40 THE LONG ROLL 


They drove or rode away, through the April night, by the forsythia 
and the flowering almond, between the towering oaks, over the 
bridge with a hollow sound. Those left behind upon the Greenwood 
porch, clustered at the top of the steps, between the white pillars, 
stood in silence until the noise of departure had died away. War- 
wick Cary, his arm around Molly, his hand in Judith’s, Unity’s 
cheek resting against his shoulder, then spoke. “It is the last merry- 
making, poor children! Well — ‘Time and tide run through the 
longest day!’” He disengaged himself, kissed each of his daughters, 
and turned toward the lighted hall. “There are papers in the library 
which I must go over to-night. Edward, you had best come with me.” 

Father and son left the porch. Miss Lucy, too, went indoors, 
called Julius, and began to give directions. Ready and energetic, 
she never wasted time in wonder at events. The event once squarely 
met, she struck immediately into the course it demanded, cheer- 
fully, without repining, and with as little attention as possible to 
forebodings. Her voice died away toward the back of the house. The 
moon was shining, and the lawn lay chequered beneath the trees. 
Corbin Wood, who had been standing in a brown study, began to 
descend the steps. “I’ll take a little walk, Judith, my dear,” he 
said, “and think it over! I’ll let myself in.”” He was gone walking 
rapidly, not toward the big gate and the road, but across to the 
fields, a little stream, and a strip that had been left of primeval 
forest. Unity and Molly, moving back to the doorstep, sat there 
whispering together in the light from the hall. Judith and Richard 
were left almost alone, Judith leaning against a white pillar, Cleave 
standing a step or two below her. 

“You have been in Richmond ?” she said. “Molly had a letter 
from Miriam —” 

“Yes, I went to find, if possible, rifled muskets for my company. 
I did not do as well as I had hoped — the supply is dreadfully small 
— but I secured a few. Two thirds of us will have to manage, until 
we can do better, with the smoothbore and even with the old flint- 
lock. I have seen a breech-loader made in the North. I wish to God 
we had it!” 

“You are going back to Botetourt ?”’ 

“As soon as it is dawn. The company will at once offer its serv- 
ices to the governor. Every moment now is important.” 


GREENWOOD 41 


“At dawn. ... You will be its captain ?” 

“T suppose so. We will hold immediately an election of officers — 
and that’s as pernicious a method of officering companies and regi- 
ments as can be imagined! ‘They are volunteers, offering all— 
they can be trusted to choose their leaders.’ I don’t perceive the 
sequence.” 

“T think that you will make a good captain.” 

He smiled. ‘‘ Why, then, the clumsy thing will work for once! I’ll 
try to be a good captain. — The clock is striking. I do not know 
when nor how I shall see Greenwood again. Judith, you’ll wish me 
well ?” 

“Will I wish you well, Richard? Yes, I will wish you well. Do not 
go at dawn.” 

He looked at her. “Do you ask me to wait?” 

“Ves, Lask you. Wait till — till later in the morning. It isso sad 
to say good-bye.” 

“T will wait then.”’ The light from the hall lay unbroken on the 
doorstep. Molly and Unity had disappeared. A little in yellow 
lamplight, chiefly in silver moonlight the porch lay deserted and 
quiet before the murmuring oaks, above the fair downward sweep of 
grass and flowers. “It is long,” said Cleave, ‘“‘since I have been 
here. The day after the tournament —”’ 

“c Yes.” 

He came nearer. “‘ Judith, was it so hard to forgive — that tour- 
nament? You had both crowns, after all.” 

“T do not know,” said Judith, ‘‘what you mean.” 

“Do you remember —do you remember last Christmas 
when, going to Lauderdale, I passed you on your way to Silver 
Hill ?” 

“Yes, I remember.” 

“T was on my way to Lauderdale, not tosee Fauquier, but to see 
you. I wished to ask you a question — I wished to make certain. 
And then you passed me going to Silver Hill, and I said, ‘It is cer- 
tainly so.’ I have believed it to be so. I believe it now. And yet I 
ask you to-night — Judith —” 

“You ask me what ?” said Judith. “Here is Mr. Stafford.” 

Maury Stafford came into the silver space before the house, 
glanced upward, and mounted the steps. ‘I walked as far as the 


42 THE LONG ROLL 


gate with Breckinridge. He tells me, Mr. Cleave, that he is of your 
Company of Volunteers.” 

(T9 Yes. bP) 

“T shall turn my face toward the sea to-morrow. Heigho! War 
is folly at the best. And you? —”’ 

“T leave Greenwood in the morning.” 

The other, leaning against a pillar, drew toward him a branch of 
climbing rose. The light from the hall struck against him. He 
always achieved the looking as though he had stepped from out a 
master-canvas. To-night this was strongly so. ‘In the morning! 
You waste no time. Unfortunately I cannot get away for another 
twenty-four hours.” He let the rose bough go and turned to Judith. 
His voice when he spoke to her became at once low and musical. 
There was light enough to see the flush in his cheek, the ardour in 
his eye. ‘‘* Unfortunately!’ What a word to usein leaving Green- 
wood! No! For me most fortunately I must wait another four and 
twenty hours.” 

“Greenwood,” said Judith, “will be lonely without old friends.” 
As she spoke, she moved toward the house door. In passing a great 
porch chair her dress caught on the twisted wood. Both men started 
forward, but Stafford was much the nearer to her. Released, she 
thanked him with grave kindness, went on to the doorway, and there 
turned, standing a moment in her drapery of dim blue, in the two 
lights. She had about her a long scarf of black lace, and now she 
drew it closer, holding it beneath her chin witha hand slender, fine, 
and strong. “Good-night,” she said. “It is not long to morning, 
now. Good-night, Mr. Stafford. Good-night, Richard.” 

The “good-night” that Stafford breathed after her needed no 
commentary. It was that of the lover confessed. Cleave, from his 
side of the porch, looked across and thought, ‘I will be a fool no 
longer. She was merely kind to me — a kindness she could afford. 
‘Do not go till morning —dear cousin !’”’ There was a silence on the 
Greenwood porch, a white-pillared rose-eembowered space, paced ere 
this by lovers and rivals. It was broken by Mr. Corbin Wood, 
returning from the fields and mounting the moonlit steps. “I have 
thought it out,” he said. “I am going as chaplain.”’ He touched 
Stafford, of whom he was fond, on the shoulder. “It’s the sweetest 
night, and as I came along I loved every leaf of the trees and every 


GREENWOOD 43 


blade of grass. It’s home, it’s fatherland, it ’s sacred soil, it’s mo- 
ther, dear Virginia —”’ 

He broke off, said good-night, and entered the house. 

The younger men prepared to follow. “The next time that we 
meet,’’ said Stafford, ‘‘may be in the thunder of the fight. I have an 
idea that I’ll know it if you’re there. I’ll look out for you.” 

“And I for you,” said Cleave. Each had spoken with entire cour- 
tesy and a marked lack of amity. There was a moment’s pause, a 
feeling as of the edge of things. Cleave, not tall, but strongly made, 
with his thick dark hair, his tanned, clean shaven, squarely cut face, 
stood very straight, in earnest and formidable. The other, leaning 
against the pillar, was the fairer to look at, and certainly not without 
his own strength. The one thought, “I will know,” and the other 
thought, “I believe you to be my foe of foes. If I can make you leave 
this place early, without speaking to her, I will do it.” 

Cleave turned squarely. ‘You have reason to regret leaving 
Greenwood —” 

Stafford straightened himself against the pillar, studied for a mo- 
ment the seal ring which he wore, then spoke with deliberation. 
“Ves. It is hard to quit Paradise for even such a tourney as we have 
before us. Ah well! when one comes riding back the welcome will be 
the sweeter!”’ 

They went indoors. Later, alone in a pleasant bedroom, the man 
who had put a face upon matters which the facts did not justify, 
opened wide the window and looked out upon moon-flooded hill and 
vale. “Do I despise myself?” he thought. “If it was false to-night I 
may yet make it truth to-morrow. All’s fair in love and war, and 
God knows my all is in this war! Judith! Judith! Judith! look my 
way, not his!’”’ He stared into the night, moodily enough. His room 
was at the side of the house. Below lay a slope of flower garden, then 
a meadow, a little stream, and beyond, a low hilltop crowned by the 
old Greenwood burying-ground. “Why not sleep? .. . Love is 
war — the underlying, the primeval, the immemorial. . . . All the 
same, Maury Stafford —” 

In her room upon the other side of the house, Judith had found 
the candles burning on the dressing-table. She blew them out, parted 
the window curtains of flowered dimity, and curling herself on the 
window-seat, became a part of the April night. Crouching there in 


44 THE LONG ROLL 


the scented air, beneath the large, mild stars, she tried to think of 
Virginia and the coming war, but at the end of every avenue she 
came upon a morning hour. Perhaps it would be in the flower gar- 
den, perhaps in the summer-house, perhaps in the plantation woods 
where the windflower and the Judas tree were in bloom. Her heart 
was hopeful. So lifted and swept was the world to-night, so ready 
for great things, that her great thing also ought to happen, her rose 
of happiness ought to bloom. “After to-morrow,” she said to her- 
self, “I will think of Virginia, and I’ll begin to help. < 

Toward daybreak, lying in the large four-post bed beneath the 
white tasselled canopy, she fell asleep. The sun was an hour high 
when she awoke. Hagar, the girl who waited upon her, came in and 
flung wide the shutters. ‘‘Dar’s er mockin’ bird singin’ mighty 
neah dish-yer window! Reckon he gwine mek er nes’ in de honey- 
suckle.” 

“T meant to wake up very early,” said Judith. ‘‘Is any one down- 
stairs yet, Hagar? — No, not that dress. The one with the little 
flowers.” 

“Dar ain’ nobody down yit,” said Hagar. ‘“Marse Richard 
Cleave, he done come down early, ’way ’bout daybreak. He got one 
of de stable-men ter saddle he horse an’ he done rode er way. 
Easter, she come in de house jes’ ez he wuz leavin’, en he done tol’ her 
ter tell marster dat he’d done been thinkin’ ez how dar wuz so 
much ter do dat he’d better mek an early start, en he lef’ good-bye 
fer de fambly. Easter, she ax him won’t he wait ’twel the ladies come 
down, en he say No. ’T wuz better fer him ter go now. En he went. 
Dar ain’ nobody else come down less’n hits Marse Maury Stafford. 
— Miss Judith, honey, yo’ ain’ got enny mo’ blood in yo’ face than 
dat ar counterpane! I gwine git yo’ er cup er coffee!” 


CHAPTERY. 


THUNDER RUN 


at the tollgate halfway down the mountain. His parents 

were dead, his brothers moved away. The mountain 
girls were pretty and fain, and matches were early made. Allan 
made none; he taught with conscientiousness thirty tow-headed 
youngsters, read what books he could get, and worked in the toll- 
gate keeper’s small, bright garden. He had a passion for flowers. He 
loved, too, to sit with his pipe upon the rude porch of the toll-house, 
fanned by the marvellous mountain air, and look down over ridges 
of chestnut and oak to the mighty valley below, and across to the far 
blue wall of the Alleghenies. 

The one-roomed, log-built schoolhouse stood a mile from the road 
across the mountains, upon a higher level, in a fairy meadow below 
the mountain clearings. A walnut tree shaded it, Thunder Run 
leaped by in cascades, on either side the footpath Allan had planted 
larkspur and marigolds. Here, on a May morning, he rang the bell, 
then waited patiently until the last free-born imp elected to leave 
the delights of a minnow-filled pool, a newly discovered redbird’s 
nest, and a blockhouse in process of construction against imaginary 
Indians. At last all were seated upon the rude benches in the dusky 
room, — small tow-headed Jacks and Jills, heirs to a field of wheat or 
oats, a diminutive tobacco patch, a log cabin, a piece of uncleared 
forest, or perhaps the blacksmith’s forge, a small mountain store, or 
the sawmill down the stream. Allan read aloud the Parable of the 
Sower, and they all said the Lord’s Prayer; then he called the Blue 
Back Speller class. The spelling done, they read from the same book 
about the Martyr and his Family. Geography followed, with an 
account of the Yang-tse-Kiang and an illustration of a pagoda, after 
which the ten-year-olds took the front bench and read of little Hugh 
and old Mr. Toil. This over, the whole school fell to ciphering. They 
ciphered for half an hour, and then they had a history lesson, which 


A LLAN GOLD, teaching the school on Thunder Run, lodged 


46 | THE LONG ROLL 


told of one Curtius who leaped into a gulf to save his country. His- 
tory being followed by the writing lesson, all save the littlest present 
began laboriously to copy a proverb of Solomon. 

Half-past eleven and recess drawing on! The scholars grew rest- 
less. Could the bird’s nest still be there? Were the minnows gone 
from the pool? Had the blockhouse fallen down? Would writing go 
on forever? — The bell rang; the teacher, whom they liked well 
enough, was speaking. No more school! Recess forever — or until 
next year, which was the same thing! No more geography, reading, 
writing, arithmetic, and spelling; no more school! Hurrah! Of 
course the redbird’s nest was swinging on the bough, and the min- 
nows were in the pool, and the blockhouse was standing, and the 
sun shining with all its might! ‘All the men about here are going 
to fight,” said Allan. “I am going, too. So we’ll have to stop school 
until the war is over. Try not to forget what I’ve taught you, chil- 
dren, and try to be good boys and girls. You boys must learn now 
to be men, for you'll have to look after things and the women. And 
you girls must help your mothers all you can. It’s going to be hard 
times, little folk! You’ve played a long time at fighting Indians, and 
teas I’ve noticed you playing at fighting Yankees. Playtimé’s 
over now. It’s time to work, to think, and to try to help. You can’t 
fight for Virginia with guns and swords, but every woman and child, 
every young boy and old man in Virginia can make the hearts easier 
of those who go to fight. You be good boys and girls and do your 
duty here on Thunder Run, and God will count you as his soldiers 
just the same as if you were fighting down there in the valley, or 
before Richmond, or on the Potomac, or wherever we’re going to 
fight. You’re going to be good children; I know it!”’ He closed the 
book before him. ‘‘School’s over now. When we take in again we'll 
finish the Roman History — I’ve marked the place.”’ He left his 
rude old desk and the little platform, and stepping down amongst 
his pupils, gave to each his hand. Then he divided among them the 
scanty supply of books, patiently answered a scurry of questions, 
and outside, upon the sunshiny sward, with the wind in the walnut 
tree and the larkspur beginning to bloom, said good-bye once more. 
Jack and Jill gave no further thought to the bird’s nest, the min- 
nows in the pool, the unfinished blockhouse. Off they rushed, up 
the side of the mountain, over the wooded hills, along Thunder Run, 


THUNDER RUN 47 


where it leaped from pool to pool. They must be home with the 
news! No more school — no more school! And was father going — 
and were Johnny and Sam and Dave? Where were they going to 
fight ? As far as the big sawmill? as far away as the river? Were 
the dogs going, too? 

Allan Gold, left alone, locked the schoolhouse door, walked 
slowly along the footpath between the flowers he had planted, and, 
standing by Thunder Run, looked for awhile at the clear, brown 
water, then, with a long breath and a straightening of the shoulders, 
turned away. ‘‘Good-bye, little place!’ he said, and strode down 
the ravine to the road and the toll-house. 

The tollgate keeper, old and crippled, sat on the porch beside a 
wooden bucket of well-water. The county newspaper lay on his knee, 
and he was reading the items aloud to his wife, old, too, but active, 
standing at her ironing-board within the kitchen door. A cat purred 
in the sunshine, and all the lilac bushes were in bloom. “ ‘Ten com- 
panies from this County,’”’ read the tollgate keeper; “ ‘Ten com- 
panies from Old Botetourt,— The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle 
Rifles, the Botetourt Dragoons, the Zion Hill Company, the Roaring 
Run men, the Thunder Run —’ Air you listenin’, Sairy?” 

Sairy brought a fresh iron from the stove. “Iam a-listenin’, Tom. 
’Pears to me I ain’t done nothing but listen sence last December! 
It’s got to be sech a habit that I ketch myself waking up at night to 
listen. But I’ve got to iron as well as listen, or Allan Gold won’t 
have any shirts fit to fight in! Go on reading, I hear ye.” 

“Tt’s an editorial,’ said Tom weightily. “‘Three weeks have 
passed since war was declared. At once Governor Letcher called for 
troops; at once the call was answered. We have had in Botetourt, as 
all over Virginia, as through all the Southern States, days of excite- 
ment, sleepless nights, fanfare of preparation, drill, camp, orders, 
counter-orders, music, tears and laughter of high-hearted wo- 
men — > 99 

Sairy touched her iron with a wet finger-tip. ‘This time next year 
thar’ll be more tears, I reckon, and less laughter! I ain’t a girl, and 
I don’t hold with war — Well?” 

““Beat of drums and call of fife, heroic ardour and the cult of 
Mars a het 

cc Of em, ? ?? 


48 THE LONG ROLL 


“That’s the name of the heathen idol they used to sacrifice men 
to. ‘Parties have vanished from county and State. Whigs and 
Democrats, Unionists and Secessionists, Bell and Everett men and 
Breckinridge men — all are gone. There is now but one party — 
the party of the invaded. A month ago there was division of opinion; 
it does not exist to-day. It died in the hour when we were called 
upon to deny our convictions, to sacrifice our principles, to juggle 
with the Constitution, to play fast and loose, to blow hot and cold, 
to say one thing and do another, to fling our honour to the winds and 
to assist in coercing Sovereign States back into a Union which they 
find intolerable! It died in the moment when we saw, no longer the 
Confederation of Republics to which we had acceded, but a land 
whirling toward Empire. It is dead. There are no Union men to-day 
in Virginia. The ten Botetourt companies hold themselves under 
arms. At any moment may come the order to the front. The 
county has not spared her first-born — no, nor the darling of his 
mother! It is a rank and file different from the Old World’s rank and 
file. The rich man marches, a private soldier, beside the poor 
man; the lettered beside the unlearned; the planter, the lawyer, the 
merchant, the divine, the student side by side with the man from 
the plough, the smith, the carpenter, the hunter, the boatman, the 
labourer by the day. Ay, rank and file, you are different; and the 
army that you make will yet stir the blood and warm the heart of 
~ the world!’ ” 

The ironer stretched another garment upon the board. “If only 
we fight half as well as that thar newspaper talks! Is the editor 
going ?” 

“Yes, he is,”’ said the old man. “It’s fine talking, but it’s mighty 
near God’s truth all the same!”” He moved restlessly, then took his 
crutch and beat a measure upon the sunken floor. His faded blue 
eyes, set in a thousand wrinkles, stared down upon and across the 
great view of ridge and spur and lovely valleys in between. The 
air at this height was clear and strong as wine, the noon sunshine 
bright, not hot, the murmur in the leaves and the sound of Thun- 
der Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous. “If it had to come,” 
said Tom, “why could n’t it ha’come when I was younger? If 
’t were n’t for that darned fall out o’ Nofsinger’s hayloft I’d go, 
anyhow!” 


THUNDER RUN 49 


“Then I see,” retorted Sairy, “what Brother Dame meant by 
good comin’ out o’ evil! — Here’s Christianna.” 

A girl in a homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road 
and unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket 
such as the mountain folk weave. “‘Good-mahnin’, Mrs. Cole. Good- 
mahnin’, Mr. Cole. It cert’ny is fine weather the mountain’s having.” 

“Yes, it’s fine weather, Christianna,’’ answered the old man. 
“Come in, come in, and take a cheer!” 

Christianna came up the tiny path and seated herself, not in the 
split-bottomed chair to which he waved her, but upon the edge of 
the porch, with her back to the sapling that served for a pillar, and 
with her small, ill-shod feet just touching a bed of heartsease. She 
pushed back her sunbonnet. “‘ Dave an’ Billy told us good-bye yes- 
terday. Pap is going down the mountain to-day. Dave took the 
shotgun an’ pap has grandpap’s flintlock, but Billy did n’t have a 
gun. He said he’d take one from the Yanks.” 

“Sho!” exclaimed Sairy. ‘Did n’t he have no weapon at all ?” 

“He had a hunting-knife that was grandpap’s. An’ the black- 
smith made him what he called a spear-head. He took a bit o’ 
rawhide and tied it to an oak staff, an’ he went down the mountain 
so!” Her drawling voice died, then rose again. “‘I’ll miss Billy — 
I surely will!” It failed again, and the heartsease at her feet ran 
together into a little sea of purple and gold. She took the cape of 
her sunbonnet and with it wiped away the unaccustomed tears. 

“Sho!” said Sairy. “We'll all miss Billy. I reckon we all that 
stay at home air going to have our fill o’ missing! ——- What have 
you got in your basket, honey?” 

Christianna lifted a coloured handkerchief and drew from the 
basket a little bag of flowered chintz, roses and tulips, drawn up with 
a blue ribbon. “My! that’s pretty,” exclaimed Sairy. ‘ Whar did 
you get the stuff ?”’ 

The girl regarded the bag with soft pride. “Last summer I toted 
a bucket o’ blackberries down to Three Oaks an’ sold them to Mrs. 
Cleave. An’ she was making a valance for her tester bed, an’ I 
thought the stuff was mighty pretty, an’ she gave me a big piece! 
an’ I put it away in my picture box with my glass beads. For the 
ribbon —I’d saved a little o’ my berry money, an’ I walked to 
Buchanan an’ bought it.’”’ She drew’a long breath. ‘My land! 


50 THE LONG ROLL 


’t was fine in the town — High Street just crowded with Volun- 
teers, and the drums were beating.” Her eyes shone like stars. “It’s. 
right hard on women to stay at home an’ have all the excitement go 
away. There don’t seem to be nothin’ to make it up to us —” 

Sairy put away the ironing-board. “Sho! We’ve just got the 
little end, as usual. What’s in the bag, child ?” 

““Thar’s thread and needles in a needle-case, an’ an emery,” said 
Christianna. “I wanted a little pair of scissors that was at Mr. 
Moelick’s, but I did n’t have enough. They’d be right useful, I 
reckon, to a soldier, but I could n’t get them. I wondered if the bag 
ought to be smaller — but he’ll have room for it, I reckon? J think 
it’s right pretty.” 

Old Tom Cole leaned over, took the tiny, flowery affair, and bal- 
anced it gently upon a horny hand. “Of course he’ll have room for 
it! An’ it’s jest as pretty as they make them! — An’ here he comes. 
now, down the mountain, to thank ye himself!” 

Allan Gold thanked Christianna with simplicity. He had never 
had so pretty a thing, and he would keep it always, and every time 
he looked at it he would see Thunder Run and hear the bees in the 
flowers. It was very kind of her to make it for him, and — and he 
would keep it always. Christianna listened, and then, with her eyes 
upon the heartsease, began to say good-bye in her soft, drawling 
voice. ‘‘You’re going down the mountain to-day, Mrs. Cole says. 
Well, good-bye. An’ pap’s goin’ too, an’ Dave an’ Billy have 
gone. I reckon the birds won’t be singin’ when you come again 
— thar’ll be ice upon the creeks, I reckon.”’ She drew her shoulders. 
together as though she shivered for all the May sunshine. ‘Well, 
good-bye.” 

“T’ll walk a piece of the road with you,” said Allan, and the two: 
went out of the gate together. 

Sairy, a pan of biscuits for dinner in her hand, looked after them. 
“‘There’s a deal of things I’d do differently if I was a man! What 
was the use in sayin’ that every time he looked at that thar bag he’d 
see Thunder Run? Thunder Run ain’t a-keerin’ if he sees it or if he 
don’t see it! He might ha’ said that every time he laid eyes on them 
roses he’d see Christianna! — Thar’s a wagon comin’ up the road 
an’ a man on horseback behind. Here, I’ll take the toll —”’ 

“No, I’ll take it myself,” said Tom, reaching for the tobacco box. 


THUNDER RUN st 


which served as bank. “If I can’t ‘list, I reckon I can get all the news 
that’s goin’!” He hobbled out to the gate. ‘Mornin’, Jake! 
Mornin’, Mr. Robinson! Yes, ’tis fine weather for the crops. 
What —”’ 

“The Rockbridge companies are ordered off! Craig and Bedford 
are going, too. They say Botetourt’s time will come next. Lord! we 
used to think forest fires and floods were exciting! Down there in 
camp the boys can’t sleep at night — every time a rooster crows 
they think it’s Johnny Mason’s bugle and the order to the front! 
Ain’t Allan Gold going ?” 

Sairy spoke from the path. ‘‘Course he’s goin’ — he and twenty 
more from Thunder Run. I reckon Thunder Run ain’t goin’ to lag 
behind! Even Steve Dagg’s goin’ — though I look for him back 
afore the battle. Jim’s goin’, too, to see what he can make out of it 
— ’t won’t harm no one, I reckon, if he makes six feet o’ earth.” 

“They’re the only trash in the lot,” put in Tom. ‘The others 
are first-rate — though a heap of them are powerfully young.” 

“Thar’s Billy Maydew, for instance,” said Sairy. “Sho! Billy is 
too young to go —” 

“All the cadets have gone from Lexington, remarked the man on 
horseback. ‘‘They’ve gone to Richmond to act as drill-masters — 
every boy of them with his head as high as General Washington’s! 
I was at Lexington and saw them go. Good Lord! most of them just 
children — that Will Cleave, for instance, that used to beg a ride on 
my load of hay! Four companies of them marched away at noon, 
with their muskets shining in the sun. All the town was up and out 
— the minister blessing them, and the people crying and cheering! 
Major T. J. Jackson led them.” 

“The Thunder Run men are going in Richard Cleave’s company. 
He sets a heap o’ store by Allan, an’ wanted him for second lieu- 
tenant, but the men elected Matthew Coffin —”’ 

“Coffin’s bright enough,” said Tom, “‘but Allan’s more depend- 
able. — Well, good-day, gentlemen, an’ thank ye both!”’ 

The wagon lumbered down the springtime road and the man on 
horseback followed. The tollgate keeper hobbled back to his chair, 
and Sairy returned to her dinner. Allan was going away, and she 
was making gingerbread because he liked it. The spicy, warm fra- 
grance permeated the air, homely and pleasant as the curl of blue 


52 THE LONG ROLL 


smoke above the chimney, the little sunny porch, the buzzing of the 
bees in the lilacs. “Here’s Allan now,” said Tom. “Hey, Allan! you 
must have gone a good bit o’ the way?” 

“JT went all the way,” answered Allan, lifting the gourd of well- 
water to his lips. ‘Poor little thing! she is breaking her heart over 
Billy’s going.” 

Sairy, cutting the gingerbread into squares, held the knife sus- 
pended. ‘‘ Have ye been talkin’ about Billy all this time ?”’ 

“Ves,” said Allan. “I saw that she was unhappy and I tried to 
cheer her up. I’ll look out for the boy in every way I can.” He took 
the little bag of chintz from the bench where he had laid it when he 
went with Christianna, and turned to the rude stair that led to his 
room in the half story. He was not kin to the tollgate keepers, but 
he had lived long with them and was very fond of both. “I’ll be 
down in a moment, Aunt Sairy,” he said. “I wonder when I’ll 
smell or taste your gingerbread again, and I don’t see how I am 
going to tell you and Tom good-bye!” He was gone, humming 
“Annie Laurie” as he went. 

“*T would be just right an’ fittin’,”” remarked Mrs. Cole, “‘if half 
the men in the world went about with a piece of pasteboard round 
their necks an’ written on it, ‘Pity the Blind!’ Dinner’s most ready, 
Tom, — an’ I don’t see how I’m goin’ to tell him good-bye myself.”’ 

An hour later, in his small bare room underneath the mossy roof, 
with the small square window through which the breezes blew, 
Allan stood and looked about him. Dinner was over. It had been 
something of a feast, with unusual dainties, and a bunch of lilacs 
upon the table. Sairy had on a Sunday apron. The three had not 
been silent either; they had talked a good deal, but without much 
thought of what was said. Perhaps it was because of this that the 
meal had seemed so vague, and that nothing had left a taste in the 
mouth. It was over, and Allan was making ready to depart. 

On the floor, beside the chest of drawers, stood a small hair trunk. 
A neighbour with a road wagon had offered to take it, and Allan, too, 
down the mountain at three o’clock. In the spring of 1861, one out 
of every two Confederate privates had a trunk. One must pre- 
serve the decencies of life; one must make a good appearance in the 
field! Allan’s was small and modest enough, God knows! but such as 
it was it had not occurred to him to doubt the propriety of taking it. 


THUNDER RUN 53 


It stood there neatly packed, the shirts that Sairy had been ironing 
laid atop. The young man, kneeling beside it, placed in this or that 
corner the last few articles of his outfit. All was simple, clean, and 
new — only the books that he was taking with him were old. They 
were his Bible, his Shakespeare, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and a 
Latin book or two beside. In a place to themselves were other trea- 
sures, a daguerreotype of his mother, a capacious huswife that Sairy 
had made and stocked for him, the little box of paper “to write home 
on’”’ that had been Tom’s present, various trifles that the three had 
agreed might come in handy. Among these he now placed Chris- 
tianna’s gift. It was soft and full and bright — he had the same 
pleasure in handling it that he would have felt in touching a damask 
rose. He shut it in and rose from his knees. 

He had on his uniform. They had been slow in coming — the 
uniforms — from Richmond. It was only Cleave’s patient insist- 
ence that had procured them at last. Some of the companies were 
not uniformed at all. So enormous was the press of business 
upon the authorities, so limited was the power of an almost 
purely agricultural, non-manufacturing world suddenly to clothe 
alike these thousands of volunteers, suddenly to arm them with 
something better than a fowling-piece or a Revolutionary flintlock, 
that the wonder is, not that they did so badly, but that they did so 
well. Pending the arrival of the uniforms the men had drilled in 
strange array. With an attempt at similarity and a picturesque 
taste of their own, most of them wore linsey shirts and big black 
hats, tucked up on one side with a rosette of green ribbon. One man 
donned his grandfather’s Continental blue and buff — on the breast 
was a dark stain, won at King’s Mountain. Others drilled, and were 
now ready to march, as they came from the plough, the mill, or the 
forge. But Cleave’s company, by virtue of Cleave himself, was 
fairly equipped. The uniforms had come, and there was a decent 
showing of modern arms. Billy Maydew’s hunting-knife and spear 
would be changed on the morrow fora musket, though in Billy’s case 
the musket would certainly be the old smoothbore, calibre sixty- 
nine. 

Allan’s own gun, left him by his father, rested against the wall. 
The young man, for all his quietude, his conscientious ways, his daily 
work with children, his love of flowers, and his dreams of books, in- 


54 THE LONG ROLL 


herited from frontiersmen — whose lives had depended upon watch- 
fulness — quickness of wit, accuracy of eye, and steadiness of aim. 
He rarely missed his mark, and he read intuitively and easily the 
language of wood, sky, and road. On the bed lay his slouch hat, his 
haversack, knapsack, and canteen, cartridge-box and belt, and slung 
over the back of a chair was his roll of blanket. All was in readiness. 
Allan went over to the window. Below him were the flowers he had 
tended, then the great forests in their May freshness, cataracts of 
green, falling down, down to the valley. Over all hung the sky, 
divinely blue. A wind went rustling through the forest, joining its 
voice to the voice of Thunder Run. Allan knelt, touching with his 
forehead the window-sill. ““O Lord God,” he said, ““O Lord God, 
keep us all, North and South, and bring us through winding ways 
to Thy end at last.”’ As he rose he heard the wagon coming down 
the road. He turned, put the roll of blanket over one shoulder, and 
beneath the other arm assumed knapsack, haversack, and canteen, 
dragged the hair trunk out upon the landing, returned, took up his 
musket, looked once again about the small, familiar room, then left 
it and went downstairs. 

Sairy and Tom were upon the porch, the owner of the wagon with 
them. “TI’ll tote down yo’ trunk,” said the latter, and presently 
emerged from the house with that article upon his shoulder. “I 
reckon I’ll volunteer myself, just as soon’s harvest’s over,” he 
remarked genially. “But, gosh! you-all’ll be back by then, telling 
how you did it!”” He went down the path whistling, and tossed the 
trunk into the wagon. 

“T hate good-byes,” said Allan. ‘‘I wish I had stolen away last 
night.” 

“Don’t ye get killed!”’ answered Sairy sharply. “That’s what 
I’m afraid of. I know you'll go riskin’ yourself!” 

“God bless you,” said Tom. “ You’ve been like a son to us these 
five years. Don’t you forget to write.” 

“T won’t,” answered Allan. “I’ll write you long letters. And I 
won’t get killed, Aunt Sairy. I’ll take the best of care.”’ He took the 
old woman in his arms. ‘‘ You two have been just as good as a father 
and mother to me. Thank you for it. I’ll never forget. Good- 
bye.” 

eee five o’clock the wagon rolled into the village whence cer- 


THUNDER RUN 79 


tain of the Botetourt companies were to march away. It was built 
beside the river — two long, parallel streets, one upon the water 
level, the other much higher, with intersecting lanes. There were 
brick and frame houses, modest enough; there were three small, 
white-spired churches, many locust and ailanthus trees, a covered 
bridge thrown across the river to a village upon the farther side and, 
surrounding all, a noble frame of mountains. There was, in those 
days, no railroad. 

Cleave’s hundred men, having the town at large for their friend, 
stood in no lack of quarters. Some had volunteered from this place 
or its neighbourhood, others had kinsmen and associates, not one 
was so forlorn as to be without a host. The village was in a 
high fever of hospitality; had the companies marching from 
Botetourt been so many brigades, it would still have done its 
utmost. From the Potomac to the Dan, from the Eastern 
Shore to the Alleghenies the flame of patriotism burned high 
and clear. There were skulkers, there were braggarts, there were 
knaves and fools in Virginia as elsewhere, but by comparison they 
were not many, and theirs was not the voice that was heard to-day. 
The mass of the people were very honest, stubbornly convinced, 
showing to the end a most heroic and devoted ardour. This village 
was not behindhand. All her young men were going; she had her 
company, too. She welcomed Cleave’s men, gathered for the 
momentarily expected order to the front, and lavished upon them, 
as on two other companies within her bounds, every hospitable care. 

The wagon driver deposited Allan Gold and his trunk before the 
porch of the old, red brick hotel, shook hands with a mighty grip, 
and rattled on toward the lowerend of town. The host came out to 
greet the young man, two negro boys laid hold of his trunk, a passing 
volunteer in butternut, with a musket as long as Natty Bumpo’s, 
hailed him, and a cluster of elderly men sitting with tilted chairs in 
the shade of a locust tree rose and gave him welcome. “It’s Allan 
Gold from Thunder Run, is n’t it? Good-day, sir, good-day! Can’t 
have too many from Thunder Run; good giant stuff! Have you 
somewhere to stay to-night? If not, any one of us will be happy to 
look after you. — Mr. Harris, let us have juleps all round —” 

“Thank you very kindly, sir,” said Allan, “but I must go find my 
captain.” 


56 THE LONG ROLL 


“T saw him,” remarked a gray-haired gentleman, “just now down 
the street. He’s seeing to the loading of his wagons, showing Jim 
Ball and the drivers just how to do it — and he says he is n’t going 
to show them but this once. They seemed right prompt to learn.”’ 

“T was thar too,” put in an old farmer. ‘“‘They’re mighty heavy 
wagons,’ I says, says I. ‘Three times too heavy,’ he says, says he. 
‘This company’s got the largest part of its provisions for the whole 
war right here and now,’ says he. ‘Thar’s a heap of trunks,’ says I. 
‘More than would be needed for the White Sulphur,’ he says, says 
he. ‘This time two years we’ll march lighter,’ says he —”’ 

There were exclamations. ‘‘Two years! Thunderation! — This 
war’ll be over before persimmons are ripe! Why, the boys have n’t 
volunteered but for one year —and even that seemed kind of 
senseless! Two years! He’s daft!” 

“T dunno,” quoth the other. “If fighting’s like farming it’s all- 
fired slow work. Anyhow, that’s what he said. ‘This time two years 
we ll march lighter,’ he says, says he, and then I came away. He’s 
down by the old warehouse by the bridge, Mr. Gold — and I just 
met Matthew Coffin and he says thar’s going to be a parade pre- 
sently.”’ 

An hour later, in the sunset glow, in a meadow by the river, the 
three companies paraded. The new uniforms, the bright muskets, 
the silken colours, the bands playing ‘‘ Dixie,” the quick orders, the 
more or less practised evolutions, the universal martial mood, the 
sense of danger over all, as yet thrilling only, not leaden, the known 
faces, the loved faces, the imminent farewell, the flush of glory, the 
beckoning of great events — no wonder every woman, girl, and 
child, every old man and young boy who could reach the meadow 
were there, watching in the golden light, half wild with euthusiasm! 


Wish I was in de land ob cotton, 
Old times dar am not forgotten 
Look away! look away! Dixie Land. 


At one side, beneath a great sugar maple, were clustered a number 
of women, mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts, of those who were 
going forth to war. They swayed forward, absorbed in watching, 
not the companies as a whole, but one or two, sometimes three or 
four figures therein. They had not held them back; never-in the 


THUNDER RUN 57 


times of history were there more devotedly patriotic women than 
they of the Southern States. They lent their plaudits; they were 
high in the thoughts of the men moving with precision beneath 
the great flag of Virginia, to the sound of music, in the green 
meadow by the James. The colours of the several companies had 
been sewed by women, sitting together in dim old parlours, behind 
windows framed in roses. One banner had been made from a 
wedding gown. 


Look away! look away! 
Look away down South to Dixie! 


The throng wept and cheered. The negroes, slave and free, 
belonging to this village and the surrounding country, were of an 
excellent type, worthy and respectable men and women, honoured 
by and honouring their “white people.”” A number of these were in 
the meadow by the river, and they, too, clapped and cheered, borne 
away by music and spectacle, gazing with fond eyes upon some 
nursling, or playmate, or young, imperious, well-liked master in 
those gleaming ranks. Isaac, son of Abraham, or Esau and Jacob, 
sons of Isaac, marching with banners against Canaan or Moab, may 
have heard some such acclaim from the servants left behind. Sev- 
eral were going with the company. Captain and lieutenants, and 
more than one sergeant and corporal had their body-servants — 
these were the proudest of the proud and the envied of their brethren. 
The latter were voluble. ‘‘ Des look at Wash, — des look at Wash- 
ington Mayo! Actin’ lak he own er co’te house an’ er stage line! O 
my Lawd! wish I wuz er gwine! An dat dar Tullius from Three Oaks 
— he gwine march right behin’ de captain, an’ Marse Hairston 
Breckinridge’s boy he gwine march right behin’ him! — Dar de big 
drum ag’in!”’ 

In Dixie land I’ll take my stand, 
To live and die in Dixie! 

Look away! Look away! 
Look away down South to Dixie! 


The sun set behind the great mountain across the river. Parade 
was over, ranks broken. The people and their heroes, some restless, 
others tense, all flushed of cheek and bright of eye, all borne upon 
a momentous upward wave of emotion, parted this way and that, to 


58 THE LONG ROLL 


supper, to divers preparations, fond talk, and farewells, to an indoor 
hour. Then, presently, out again in the mild May night, out into 
High Street and Low Street, in the moonlight, under the odour of 
the white locust clusters. The churches were lit and open; in each 
there was brief service, well attended. Later, from the porch of the 
old hotel, there was speaking. It drew toward eleven o’clock. The 
moon was high, the women and children all housed, the oldest men, 
spent with the strain of the day, also gone to their homes, or their 
friends’ homes. The Volunteers and a faithful few were left. They 
could not sleep; if war was going to be always as exciting as this, 
how did soldiers ever sleep? There was not among them a man who 
had ever served in war, so the question remained unanswered. A 
Thunder Run man volunteered the information that the captain 
was asleep — he had been to the house where the captain lodged 
and his mother had come to the door with her finger on her lips, 
and he had looked past her and seen Captain Cleave lying on a sofa 
fast asleep. Thunder Run’s comrades listened, but they rather 
doubted the correctness of his report. It surely was n’t very sol- 
dier-like to sleep — even upon a sofa — the night before marching 
away! The lieutenants were n’t asleep. Hairston Breckinridge had 
a map spread out upon a bench before the post office, and was 
demonstrating to an eager dozen the indubitable fact that the big 
victory would be either at Harper’s Ferry or Alexandria. Young 
Matthew Coffin was in love, and might be seen through the hotel 
window writing, candles all around him, at a table, covering one 
pale blue sheet after another with impassioned farewells. Sergeants 
and corporals and men were wakeful. Some of these, too, were writ- 
ing letters, sending messages; others joined in the discussion as to 
the theatre of war, or made knots of their own, centres of conjec- 
tures and prophecy; others roamed the streets, or down by the river 
bank watched the dark stream. Of these, a few proposed to strip 
and have a swim — who knew when they’d see the old river again? 
But the notion was frowned upon. One must be dressed and ready. 
At that very moment, perhaps, a man might be riding into town 
with the order. The musicians were not asleep. Young Matthew 
Coffin, sealing his letter some time after midnight, and coming 
out into the moonlight and the fragrance of the locust trees, had an 
inspiration. All was in readiness for the order when it should come, 


THUNDER RUN 59 


and who, in the meantime, wanted to do so prosaic a thing as rest? 
“ Boys, let us serenade the ladies!”’ 

The silver night wore on. So many of the “boys” had sisters, that 
there were many pretty ladies staying in the town or at the two 
or three pleasant old houses upon its outskirts. Two o’clock, three 
o’clock passed, and there were yet windows to sing beneath. Old 
love songs floated through the soft and dreamy air; there was a sense 
of angelic beings in the unlit rooms above, even of the flutter of their 
wings. Then, at the music’s dying fall, flowers were thrown; there 
seemed to descend a breath, a whisper, “‘Adieu, heroes — adored, 
adored heroes!’ A scramble for the flowers, then out at the gate and 
on to the next house, and so da capo. 

Dawn, though the stars were yet shining, began to make itself felt. 
A coldness was in the air, a mist arose from the river, there came a 
sensation of arrest, of somewhere an icy finger upon the pulse of 
life. 

Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie, 
Where early fa’s the dew, 


And ’t was there that Annie Laurie 
Gie’d me her promise true, — 


They were singing now before an old brick house in the lower 
street. There were syringas in bloom in the yard. A faint light was 
rising in the east, the stars were fading. / 


Gie’d me her promise true 
Which ne’er forgot shall be — 


Suddenly, from High Street, wrapped in mist, a bugle rang out. 
The order — the order — the order to the front! It called again, 
sounding the assembly. Fall in, men, fall in! 

At sunrise Richard Cleave’s company went away. There was a 
dense crowd in the misty street, weeping, cheering. An old minister, 
standing beside the captain, lifted his arms — the men uncovered, 
the prayer was said, the blessing given. Again the bugle blew, the 
women cried farewell. The band played “‘Virginia,”’ the flag streamed 
wide in the morning wind. Good-bye, good-bye, and again good- 
bye! Attention! Take arms! Shoulder arms! Right face! FORWARD, 
MARCH! 


CHAPTER VI 
BY ASHBY’S GAP 


HE 65th Virginia Infantry, Colonel Valentine Brooke, was 
encamped to the north of Winchester in the Valley of Vir- 
ginia, in a meadow through which ran a stream, and upon a 
hillside beneath a hundred chestnut trees, covered with white tassels 
of bloom. To its right lay the 2d, the 4th, the sth, the 27th, and 
the 33d Virginia, forming with the 65th the First Brigade, General 
T. J. Jackson. The battery attached — the Rockbridge Artillery — 
occupied an adjacent apple orchard. To the left, in other July 
meadows and over other chestnut-shaded hills, were spread the 
brigades of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Somewhere in the distance, 
behind the screen of haze, were Stuart and his cavalry. Across the 
stream a brick farmhouse, ringed with mulberry trees, made the 
headquarters of Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the forces of the 
Confederacy — an experienced, able, and wary soldier, engaged just 
now, with eleven thousand men, in watching Patterson with fifteen 
thousand on the one hand, and McDowell with thirty-five thousand 
on the other, and in listening attentively for a voice from Beaure- 
gard with twenty thousand at Manassas. It was the middle of July, 
1861. 
First Brigade headquarters was a tree — an especially big tree — 
a little removed from the others. Beneath it stood a kitchen chair 
and a wooden table, requisitioned from the nearest cabin and scru- 
pulously paid for. At one side was an extremely small tent, but 
Brigadier-General T. J. Jackson rarely occupied it. He sat beneath 
the tree, upon the kitchen chair, his feet, in enormous cavalry boots, 
planted precisely before him, his hands rigid at his sides. Here he 
transacted the business of each day, and here, when it was over,-he 
sat facing the North. An awkward, inarticulate, and peculiar man, 
with strange notions about his health and other matters, there was 
about him no breath of grace, romance, or pomp of war. He was 
ungenial, ungainly, with large hands and feet, with poor eyesight 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 61 


and a stiff address. There did not lack spruce and handsome youths 
in his command who were vexed to the soul by the idea of being led 
to battle by such a figure. The facts that he had fought very bravely 
in Mexico, and that he had for the enemy a cold and formidable 
hatred were for him; most other things against him. He drilled his 
troops seven hours a day. His discipline was of the sternest, his 
censure a thing to make the boldest officer blench. A blunder, a 
slight negligence, any disobedience of orders — down came repri- 
mand, suspension, arrest, with an iron certitude, a relentlessness 
quite like Nature’s. Apparently he was without imagination. He 
had but little sense of humour, and no understanding of a joke. He 
drank water and sucked lemons for dyspepsia, and fancied that the 
use of pepper had caused a weakness in his left leg. He rode a raw- 
boned nag named Little Sorrel, he carried his sabre in the oddest 
fashion, and said “oblike” instead of “oblique.” He found his 
greatest pleasure in going to the Presbyterian Church twice on Sun- 
days and to prayer meetings through the week. Now and then there 
‘ was a gleam in his eye that promised something, but the battles had 
not begun, and his soldiers hardly knew what it promised. One or 
two observers claimed that he was ambitious, but these were chiefly 
laughed at. To the brigade at large he seemed prosaic, tedious, and 
strict enough, performing all duties with the exactitude, monotony, 
and expression of a clock, keeping all plans with the secrecy of the 
sepulchre, rarely sleeping, rising at dawn, and requiring his staff to do 
likewise, praying at all seasons, and demanding an implicity of obe- 
dience which might have been in order with some great and glorious 
captain, some idolized Napoleon, but which seemed hardly the due 
of the late professor of natural philosophy and artillery tactics at 
the Virginia Military Institute. True it was that at Harper’s Ferry, 
where, as Colonel T. J. Jackson, he had commanded until John- 
ston’s arrival, he had begun to bring order out of chaos and to weave 
from a high-spirited rabble of Volunteers a web that the world was 
to acknowledge remarkable; true, too, that on the second of July, in 
the small affair with Patterson at Falling Waters, he had seemed to 
the critics in the ranks not altogether unimposing. He emerged from 
Falling Waters Brigadier-General T. J. Jackson, and his men, though 
with some mental reservations, began to call him “‘Old Jack.” The 
epithet implied approval, but approval hugely qualified. They 


62 THE LONG ROLL 


might have said — in fact, they did say — that every fool knew that 
a crazy man could fight! 

The Army of the Shenandoah was a civilian army, a high-spirited, 
slightly organized, more or less undisciplined, totally inexperienced 
in war, impatient and youthful body of men, with the lesson yet to 
learn that the shortest distance between two points is sometimes a 
curve. In its eyes Patterson at Bunker Hill was exclusively the blot 
upon the escutcheon, and the whole game of war consisted in some- 
how doing away with that blot. There was great chafing at the inac- 
tion. It was hot, argumentative July weather; the encampment to 
the north of Winchester in the Valley of Virginia hummed with the 
comments of the strategists in the ranks. Patterson should have 
been attacked after Falling Waters. What if he was entrenched 
behind stone walls at Martinsburg? Patterson should have been 
attacked upon the fifteenth at Bunker Hill. What if he has fifteen — 
thousand men ? — what if he has twenty thousand ? — What if 
McDowell is preparing to cross the Potomac? And now, on the 
seventeenth, Patterson is at Charlestown, creeping eastward, evi- 
dently going to surround the Army of the Shenandoah! Patterson is 
the burning reality and McDowell the dream — and yet Johnston 
won’t move to the westward and attack! Good Lord! we did n’t come 
from home just to watch these chestnuts get ripe! All the generals are 
crazy, anyhow. 

It was nine, in the morning of Thursday the eighteenth, — a 
scorching day. The locusts were singing of the heat; the grass, 
wherever men, horses, and wagon wheels had not ground it into dust, 
was parched to a golden brown; the mint by the stream looked 
wilted. The morning drill was over, the 65th lounging beneath the 
trees. It was almost too hot to fuss about Patterson, almost too hot 
to pity the sentinels, almost too hot to wonder where Stuart’s 
cavalry had gone that morning, and why “Old Joe” quartered 
behind the mulberries in the brick farmhouse, had sent a staff 
officer to “Old Jack,” and why Bee’s and Bartow’s and Elzey’s 
brigades had been similarly visited; almost too hot to play checkers, 
to whittle a set of chessmen, to finish that piece of Greek, to read 
“Ivanhoe” and resolve to fight like Brian de Bois Gilbert and Rich- 
ard Coeur de Lion in one, to write home, to rout out knapsack and 
haversack, and look again at fifty precious trifles; too hot to smoke, 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 63 


to tease Company A’s pet coon, to think about Thunder Run, to 
wonder how pap was gettin’ on with that thar piece of corn, and 
what the girls were sayin’; too hot to borrow, too hot to swear, too 
hot to go down to the creek and wash a shirt, too hot — ‘‘What’s 
that drum beginning for? The long roll! The Army of the Valley is 
* going to movel Boys, boys, boys! We are going north to Charlestown! . 
Boys, boys, boys! We are going to lick Patterson!” 

At noon the Army of the Valley, the First Brigade leading, 
uncoiled itself, regiment by regiment, from the wide meadow and 
the chestnut wood, swept out upon the turnpike — and found its 
head turned toward the south! There was stupefaction, then 
tongues were loosed. “‘ What’s this — what’s this, boys? Charles- 
town ain’t in this direction. Old Joe’s lost his bearings! 
Johnny Lemon, you go tell him so — go ask Old Jack if you can’t. 
Whoa, there! The fool’s going!! Come back here quick, Johnny, 
afore the captain sees you! O hell! we’re going right back through 
Winchester!” 

A wave of anger swept over the First Brigade. The 65th grew 
intractable, moved at a snail’s pace. The company officers went to 
and fro. “Close up, men, close up! No, I don’t know any more than 
you do — maybe it’s some roundabout way. Close up — close up!”’ 
The colonel rode along the line. ‘‘What’s the matter here? You 
are n’t going toa funeral! Think it’s a fox hunt, boys, and step out 
lively!” A courier arrived from the head of the column. “General 
Jackson’s compliments to Colonel Brooke, and he says if this regi- 
ment is n’t in step in three minutes he'll leave it with the sick in 
Winchester!” 

The First Brigade, followed by Bee, Bartow, and Elzey, marched 
sullenly down the turnpike, into Winchester, and through its dusty 
streets. The people were all out, old men, boys, and women throng- 
ing the brick sidewalks. The army had seventeen hundred sick in 
the town. Pale faces looked out of upper windows; men just recover- 
ing from dysentery, from measles, from fever, stumbled out of shady 
front yards and fell into line; others, more helpless, started, then 
wavered back. “Boys, boys! you ain’t never going to leave us here 
for the Yanks to take? Boys—boys—” The citizens, too, had 
their say. ‘Is Winchester to be left to Patterson? We’ve done our 
best by you — and you go marching away!” Several of the older 


64 THE LONG ROLL 


women were weeping, the younger looked scornful. Close up, men, 
close up — close up! 

The First Brigade was glad when it was through the town. Before 
it, leading southward through the Valley of Virginia, stretched the 
great pike, a hundred and twenty miles of road, traversing as fair, 
rich, and happy a region as war ever found a paradise and left a 
desolation. To the east towered the Blue Ridge, to west the Great 
North and Shenandoah Mountains, twenty miles to the south 
Massanutton rose like a Gibraltar from the rolling fields of wheat 
and corn, the orchard lands and pleasant pastures. The region was 
one of old mills, turning flashing wheels, of comfortable red brick 
houses and well-stored barns, of fair market towns, of a noble breed 
of horses, and of great, white-covered wagons, of clear waters and 
sweet gardens, of an honest, thrifty, brave, and intelligent people. 
It was a fair country, and many of the army were at home there, but 
the army had at the moment no taste for its beauties. It wanted 
to see Patterson’s long, blue lines; it wanted to drive them out of 
Virginia, across the Potomac, back to where they came from. 

The First Brigade was dispirited and critical, and as it had not yet 
learned to control its mood, it marched as a dispirited and critical 
person would be apt to march in the brazen middle of a July day. 
Every spring and rivulet, every blackberry bush and apple tree upon 
the road gathered recruits. The halts for no purpose were in- 
terminable, the perpetual Close up, close up, men! of the exasperated 
officers as unavailing as the droning in the heat of the burnished 
June-bugs. The brigade had no intention of not making known its 
reluctance to leave Patterson. It took an hour to make a mile from 
Winchester. General Jackson rode down the column on Little Sorrel 
and said something to the colonel of each regiment, which something 
the colonels passed on to the captains. The next mile was made in 
half an hour. 

The July dust rose from the pike in clouds, hot, choking, thick 
as the rain of ash from a volcano. It lay heavy upon coat, cap, 
haversack, and knapsack, upon the muskets and upon the colours, 
drooping in the heat, drooping at the idea of turning back upon 
Patterson and going off, Heaven and Old Joe knew where! Tramp, 
tramp over the hot pike, sullenly southward, hot without and hot 
within! The knapsack was heavy, the haversack was heavy, the 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 65 


musket was heavy. Sweat ran down from under cap or felt hat, 
and made grimy trenches down cheek and chin. The men had too 
thick underwear. They carried overcoat and blanket — it was hot, 
hot, and every pound like ten! To keep — to throw away? To keep — 
to throw away? The beat of feet kept time to that pressing question, 
and to Just marching to be marching ! — reckon Old Joe thinks it’s fun, 
and to Where in hell are we going, anyway ? 

Through the enormous dust cloud that the army raised the trees 
of the valley appeared as brown smudges against an ochreish sky. 
The farther hills and the mountains were not seen at all. The stone 
fences on either side the road, the blackberry bushes, the elder, the 
occasional apple or cherry tree were all but dun lines and blotches. 
Oh, hot, hot! A man swung his arm and a rolled overcoat landed in 
the middle of a briar patch. A second followed suit — a third, a 
fourth. A great, raw-boned fellow from some mountain clearing 
jerked at the lacing of his shoes and in a moment was marching bare- 
foot, the offending leather swinging from his arm. To right and left 
he found imitators. A corpulent man, a merchant used to a big 
chair set in the shady front of a village store, suffered greatly, pale 
about the lips, and with his breath coming in wheezing gasps. His 
overcoat went first, then his roll of blanket. Finally he gazed a mo- 
ment, sorrowfully enough, at his knapsack, then dropped it, too, 
quietly, in a fence corner. Close up, men — close up! 

A wind arose and blew the dust maddeningly to and fro. In the 
Colour Company of the 65th a boy began to cough, uncontrollably, 
with a hollow sound. Those near him looked askance. ‘‘ You’d bet- 
ter run along home, sonny! Yo’ ma had n’t ought to let you come. 
Darn it all! if we march down this pike longer, we’ll all land home! — 
If you listen right hard you can hear Thunder Run! — And that 
thar Yank hugging himself back thar at Charlestown! — dessay 
he’s telegraphin’ right this minute that we’ve run away —”’ 

Richard Cleave passed along the line. “Don’t be so down- 
hearted, men! It’s not really any hotter than at a barbecue at 
home. Who was that coughing?” 

“‘ Andrew Kerr, sir.” 

‘Andrew Kerr, you go to the doctor the first thing after roll-call 
to-night. Cheer up, men! No one’s going to send you home without 
fighting.” 


66 THE LONG ROLL 


From the rear came a rumble, shouted orders, a cracking of whips. 
The column swerved to one side of the broad road, and the 
Rockbridge Artillery passed — a vision of horses, guns, and men, 
wrapped in a dun whirlwind and disappearing in the blast. They 
were gone in thunder through the heat and haze. The 65th Vir- 
ginia wondered to a man why it had not chosen the artillery. 

Out of a narrow way stretching westward, came suddenly at a 
gallop a handful of troopers, black plumed and magnificently 
mounted, swinging into the pike and disappearing in a pillar of dust 
toward the head of the column. Back out of the cloud sounded the 
jingling of accoutrements, the neighing of horses, a shouted order. 

The infantry groaned. ‘‘Ten of the Black Horse! — where are the 
rest of them, I wonder? Oh, ain’t they lucky dogs?” 

“‘Stuart’s men have the sweetest time! — just galloping over the 
country, and making love, and listening to Sweeney’s banjo — 

If you want to have a good time — 

If you want to have a good time, 

Jine the cavalry! — 
What’s that road over there — the cool-looking one? The road to 
Ashby’s Gap? Wish this pike was shady like that!” 

A bugle blew; the command to halt ran down the column. The 
First Brigade came to a stand upon the dusty pike, in the heat and 
glare. The 65th was the third in column, the 4th and the 27th 
leading. Suddenly from the 4th there burst a cheer, a loud and high 
note of relief and exultation. A moment, and the infection had 
spread to the 27th; it, too, was cheering wildly. Apparently there 
were several couriers — No! staff officers, the 65th saw the gold lace 
— with some message or order from the commanding general, now 
well in advance with his guard of Black Horse. They were riding 
down the line — Old Jack was with them — the 4th and the 27th 
were cheering like mad. The colonel of the 65th rode forward. 
There was a minute’s parley, then he turned, “Sixty-fifth! It is n’t 
a fox hunt — it’s a bear hunt! ‘General Johnston to the 65th’ —”’ 
He broke off and waved forward the aide-de-camp beside him. “Tell 
them, Captain Washington, tell them what a terror to corn-cribs 
we’re going after!”’ 

The aide, a young man, superbly mounted, laughed, raised his 
voice. “Sixty-fifth! The Army of the Valley is going through 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 67 


Ashby’s Gap to Piedmont, and from Piedmont by rail to Manassas 
Junction. General Stuart is still at Winchester amusing General 
Patterson. At Manassas our gallant army under General Beaure- 
gard is attacked by McDowell with overwhelming numbers. The 
commanding general hopes that his troops will step out like men 
and make a forced march to save the country!” 

He was gone — the other staff officers were gone — Old Jack was 
gone. They passed the shouting 65th, and presently from down the 
line came the cheers of the 2d, 21st, and 33d Virginia. Old Jack 
rode back alone the length of his brigade; and so overflowing was 
the enthusiasm of the men that they cheered him, cheered lustily! 
He touched his old forage cap, went stiffly by upon Little Sorrel. 
From the rear, far down the road, could be heard the voices of Bee, 
Bartow, and Elzey. Ardour, elasticity, strength returned to the 
Army of the Shenandoah. With a triumphant cry the First Brigade 
wheeled into the road that led eastward through the Blue Ridge by 
Ashby’s Gap. 

Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock came and passed. Enthu- 
siasm carried the men fast and far, but they were raw troops and they 
suffered. The sun, too, was enthusiastic, burning with all its might. 
The road proved neither cool nor shady. All the springs seemed sud- 
denly to have dried up. Out of every hour there was a halt of ten 
minutes, and it was needed. The men dropped by the roadside, 
upon the parched grass, beneath the shadow of the sumach and the 
elder bushes, and lay without speaking. The small farmers, the 
mountaineers, the hunters, the ploughmen fared not so badly; but 
the planters of many acres, the lawyers, the doctors, the divines, 
the merchants, the millers, and the innkeepers, the undergraduates 
from the University, the youths from classical academies, county 
stores, village banks, lawyers’ offices, all who led a horseback or 
sedentary existence, and the elderly men and the very young, — 
these suffered heavily. The mounted officers were not foot-weary, 
but they also had heat, thirst, and hunger, and, in addition, respon- 
sibility, inexperience, and the glance of their brigadier. The ten 
minutes were soon over. Fall in — fallin, men! The short rest made 
the going worse, the soldiers rose so stiff and sore. 

The men had eaten before leaving the camp above Winchester — 
but that was days ago. Now, as they went through Clarke County, 


68 THE LONG ROLL 


there appeared at cross-roads, at plantation gates, at stiles leading 
into green fields, ladies young and old, bearing baskets of good 
things hastily snatched from pantry and table. They had pitchers, 
too, of iced tea, of cold milk, even of raspberry acid and sangaree. 
How good it all was! and how impossible to go around! But, fed or 
hungry, refreshed or thirsty, the men blessed the donors, and that 
reverently, with a purity of thought, a chivalrousness of regard, a 
shade of feeling, youthful and sweet and yet virile enough, which 
went with the Confederate soldier into the service and abode to the 
end. 

The long afternoon wore to a close. The heat decreased, but the 
dust remained and the weariness grew to gigantic proportions. The 
First Brigade was well ahead of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. It had 
started in advance and it had increased the distance. If there was 
any marching in men, Jackson forced it out; they went a league for 
him where another would have procured but a mile, but even he, 
even enthusiasm and the necessity of relieving Beauregard got upon 
this march less than two miles an hour. Most happily, McDowell, 
advancing on Beauregard and Bull Run and fearing ‘‘masked bat- 
teries,” marched much more slowly. At sunset the First Brigade 
reached the Shenandoah. 

The mounted officers took up one and sometimes two men beside 
them, and the horses struggled bravely through the cold, rapid, 
breast-deep current. Behind them, company by company, the men 
stripped off coat and trousers, piled clothing and ammunition upon 
their heads, held high their muskets, and so crossed. The guns and 
wagons followed. Before the river was passed the night fell dark. 

The heat was now gone by, the dust was washed away, the men 
had drunk their fill. From the haversacks they took the remnant of 
the food cooked that morning. The biscuit and the bacon tasted 
very good; not enough of either, it was true, but still something. 
The road above the river rose steeply, for here was the Blue Ridge, 
lofty and dark, rude with rock, and shaggy with untouched for- 
ests. This was the pass through the mountains, this was Ashby’s 
Gap. The brigade climbed with the road, tired and silent and grim. 
The day had somehow been a foretaste of war; the men had a new 
idea of the draught and of the depth of the cup. They felt older, and 
the air, blowing down from the mountains, seemed the air of a far 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 69 


country toward which they had been travelling almost without 
knowing it. They saw now that it was a strange country, much 
unlike that in which they had hitherto lived. They climbed slowly 
between dark crag and tree, and wearily. All song and jest had 
died; they were tired soldiers, hungry now for sleep. Close up, men, 
close up! 

They came to the height of the pass, marked by a giant poplar 
whose roots struck deep into four counties. Here again there was a 
ten minutes’ halt; the men sank down upon the soft beds or leaf and 
mould. Their eyelids drooped; they were in a dream at once, and in 
a dream heard the Fall in — fall in, men! The column stumbled to 
its feet and began the descent of the mountain. 

Clouds came up; at midnight when they reached the lower slope, 
it was raining. Later they came to the outskirts of the village of 
Paris, to a grove of mighty oaks, and here the brigade was halted 
for the night. The men fell upon the ground and slept. No food was 
taken, and no sentries were posted. An aide, very heavy-eyed, asked 
if guard should not be set. “No, sir,”’ answered the general. ‘Let 
them sleep.” ‘‘And you, sir?” “I don’t feel like it. I’ll see that 
there is no alarm.”” With his cloak about him, with his old cadet cap 
pulled down over his eyes, awkward and simple and plain, he paced 
out the night beneath the trees, or sat upon a broken rail fence, 
watching his sleeping soldiers and, the aide thought, praying. 

The light rain ceased, the sky cleared, the pale dawn came up 
from the east. In the first pink light the bugles sounded. Up rose 
the First Brigade, cooked and ateits breakfast, swung out from the 
oak grove upon the highroad, and faced the rising sun. The morning 
was divinely cool, the men in high spirits, Piedmont and the railway 
were but six miles down the road. The First Brigade covered the 
distance by eight o’clock. There was the station, there was the old 
Manassas Gap railroad, there was the train of freight and cattle cars 
— ever so many freight and cattle cars! Company after company 
the men piled in; by ten o’clock every car was filled, and the plat- 
forms and roofs had their quota. The crazy old engine blew its 
whistle, the First Brigade was off for Manassas. Bee, Bartow, and 
Elzey, arriving at Piedmont in the course of the morning, were not so 
fortunate. The railroad had promised, barring unheard-of accident, 
to place the four brigades in Manassas by sunrise of the twentieth. 


70 THE LONG ROLL 


The accident duly arrived. There was a collision, the track was 
obstructed, and only the 7th and 8th Georgia got through. The 
remainder of the infantry waited perforce at Piedmont, a portion of 
it for two mortal days, and that without rations. The artillery and 
the cavalry — the latter having now come up — marched by the 
wagon road and arrived in fair time. 

From ten in the morning until sunset the First Brigade and the 
Manassas Gap train crept like a tortoise through the July weather, 
by rustling cornfields, by stream and wood, by farmhouse and vil- 
lage. It was hot in the freight and cattle cars, hot, cinderish, and 
noisy. With here and there an exception the men took off their coats, 
loosened the shoes from their feet, made themselves easy in any way 
that suggested itself. The subtle give, the slip out of convention and 
restraint back toward a less trammelled existence, the faint return 
of the more purely physical, the slight withdrawal of the more purely 
mental, the rapid breaking down of the sheer artificial — these and 
other marks of one of the many predicates of war began to show 
themselves in this journey. But at the village stations there came a 
change. Women and girls were gathered here, in muslin freshness, 
with food and drink for “our heroes.”” The apparel discarded be- 
tween stations was assiduously reassumed whenever the whistle 
blew. “Our heroes” looked out of freight and cattle car, somewhat 
grimy, perhaps, but clothed and in their right mind, with a becoming 
bloom upon them of eagerness, deference, and patriotic willingness 
to die in Virginia’s defence. The dispensers of nectar and ambrosia 
loved them all, sped them on to Manassas with many a prayer and 
God bless vou 

At sunset the whistle shee its loudest. It was their destina- 
tion. The train jolted and jerked to a halt. Regiment by regiment, 
out poured the First Brigade, fell into line, and was double-quicked 
four miles to Mitchell’s Ford and a pine wood, where, hungry, 
thirsty, dirty, and exhausted, the ranks were broken. 

This was the night of the nineteenth. At Piedmont the brigade 
had heard of yesterday’s minor affair at this ford between Tyler’s 
division and Longstreet, the honours of the engagement resting with 
the Confederate. In the pine wood there was a line of fresh graves; 
on the brown needles lay boughs that shell had cut from the trees; 
there were certain stains upon the ground. The First Brigade ate 


BY ASHBY’S GAP 71 


and slept — the last somewhat feverishly. The night passed with- 
out alarm. An attack in force was expected in the morning, but it 
did not come. McDowell, amazingly enough, still rested confident 
that Patterson had detained Johnston in the valley. Possessed by 
this belief he was now engaged in a “reconnoissance by stealth,” his 
object being to discover a road whereby to cross Bull Run above the 
Stone Bridge and turn Beauregard’s left. This proceeding and an 
afternoon rest in camp occupied him the whole of the twentieth. 
On this day Johnston himself reached Manassas, bringing with him 
Bee’s 2d Mississippi and 4th Alabama, and Bartow’s 7th and 8th 
Georgia. Stuart, having successfully amused Patterson, was also 
on hand. The remainder of the Army of the Shenandoah, detained 
by the break upon the Manassas Gap, was yet missing, and many an 
anxious glance the generals cast that way. 

The First Brigade, undiscovered by the “reconnoissance by 
stealth,” rested all day Saturday beneath the pines at Mitchell’s 
Ford, and at night slept quietly, no longer minding the row of 
graves. At dawn of Sunday a cannon woke the men, loud and 
startling, McDowell’s signal gun, fired from Centreville, and an- 
nouncing to the Federal host that the interrupted march, the “On 
to Richmond” blazoned on banners and chalked on trunks, would 
now be resumed, willy nilly the “‘rebel horde” on thesouthern bank 
of Bull Run. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE DOGS OF WAR 


floating across, all seen uncertainly between branches of pine. 

A mist lay above Bull Run — on the high, opposite bank the 
woods rose huddled, indistinct, and dream-like. The air was still, 
cool, and pure,a Sunday morning waiting for church bells. There 
were no bells; the silence was shattered by all the drums of the bri- 
gade beating the long roll. Men rose from the pine needles, shook 
themselves, caught up musket and ammunition belt. The echoes 
from McDowell’s signal cannon had hardly died when, upon the 
wooded banks of Bull Run, the First Brigade stood in arms. 

Minutes passed. Mitchell’s Ford marked the Confederate centre. 
Here, and at Blackburn’s Ford, were Bonham, Bee, Bartow, Long- 
street, and Jackson. Down the stream, at MacLean’s Ford and 
Union Mills, Early and Ewell and D. R. Jones held the right. To 
the left, up Bull Run, beyond Bee and beyond Stuart, at the Island, 
Ball and Lewis fords, were Cocke’s Brigade and Hampton’s Legion, 
and farther yet, at the Stone Bridge, Evans with a small brigade. 
Upon the northern bank of the Run, in the thick woods opposite 
Mitchell’s and Blackburn’s fords, was believed to be the mass of 
the invaders. There had been a certitude that the battle would join 
about these fords. Beauregard’s plan was to cross at MacLean’s and 
fall upon the Federal left. Johnston had acceded, and with the first 
light orders had gone to the brigadiers. “ Hold yourselves in readi- 
ness to cross and to attack.” 

Now suddenly from the extreme left, away in the direction of the 
Stone Bridge, burst an unexpected sound both of musketry and 
artillery. It was distant, it waxed and waned and waxed again. The 
First Brigade, nervous, impatient, chilled by the dawn, peered 
across its own reach of misty stream, and saw naught but the dream- 
like woods. Tyler’s division was over there, it knew. When would 


I the east was a great flare of pink with small golden clouds 


THE DOGS OF WAR 72 


firing begin along this line? When would the brigade have orders to 
move, when would it cross, when would things begin to happen? 

An hour passed. Ranks were broken and the men allowed to cook 
and eat a hasty breakfast. How good, in the mist-drenched wood, 
tasted the scalding coffee, how good the cornbread and the bacon! 
The last crumb swallowed, they waited again, lying on the brown 
earth beneath the pines. The mounted officers, advanced upon the 
bank of the stream and seen through the mist, loomed larger, man 
and horse, than life. Jackson sat very quiet upon Little Sorrel, his 
lips moving. Far up the stream the firing continued. The 2d, 4th, 
5th, 27th, 33d, and 65th Virginia fidgeted, groaned, swore with 
impatience. 

Suddenly the nearer echoes awoke. A Federal battery, posted on 
the hills beyond the fringe of thick wood on the northern bank, 
opened a slow and ineffective fire against the hills and woods across 
the stream. The Confederates kept their position masked, made no 
reply. The shells fell short, and did harm only to the forest and its 
creatures. Nearly all fell short, but one, a shell from a thirty- 
pounder Parrott, entered the pine wood by Mitchell’s Ford, fell 
among the wagons of the 65th, and exploded. 

A driver was killed, a mule mangled so that it must be shot, and 
an ambulance split into kindling wood. Few in the First Brigade 
had seen such a thing before. The men brushed the pine needles and 
the earth from their coats, and looked at the furrowed ground and at 
the headless body of the driver with a startled curiosity. There was 
a sense of a sudden and vivid flash from behind the veil, and they as 
suddenly perceived that the veil was both cold and dark. This, then, 
was one of the ways in which death came, shrieking like this, ugly 
and resistless! The July morning was warm and bright, but more 
than one of the volunteers in that wood shivered as though it were 
winter. Jackson rode along the front. “They don’t attack in force 
at the Stone Bridge. A feint, I think.” He stopped before the 
colour company of the 65th. “Captain Cleave.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“You have hunters from the mountains. After the battle send 
me the man you think would make the best scout — an intelligent 
man.” 

“Very well, sir.” 


74 THE LONG ROLL 


The other turned Little Sorrel’s head toward the stream and stood 
listening. The sound of the distant cannonade increased. The pine 
wood ran back from the water, grew thinner, and gave place to mere 
copse and a field of broomsedge. From this edge of the forest came 
now a noise of mounted men. ‘Black Horse, I reckon!”’ said the 
65th. ‘Wish they’d go ask Old Joe what he and Beauregard have 
got against us! — No, ’t aint Black Horse — I see them through the 
trees — gray slouch hats and no feathers in them! Infantry, too 
— more infantry than horse. Hampton, maybe — No, they look 
like home folk —”’ A horseman appeared in the wood, guiding a 
powerful black stallion with a light hand between the pines, and 
checking him with a touch beside the bank upon which Little 
Sorrel was planted. ‘General Jackson?”’ inquired a dry, agreeable 
voice. 

“Yes, sir, I am General Jackson. What troops have you over 
there?”’ 

“The Virginia Legion.” 

Jackson put out a large hand. ‘“‘Then you are Colonel Fauquier 
Cary? I am glad to see you, sir. We never met in Mexico, but I 
heard of you — I heard of you!” | 

The other gave his smile, quick and magnetic. “And I of you, 
general. Magruder chanted your praises day and night — our good 
old Fuss and Feathers, too! Oh, Mexico!” 

Jackson’s countenance, so rigid, plain, restrained, altered as 
through some effect of soft and sunny light. The blue of the eye 
deepened, the iris enlarged, a smile came to his lips. His stiffly held, 
awkwardly erect figure relaxed, though very slightly. ‘I loved it in 
Mexico. I have never forgotten it. Dear land of the daughters of 
Spain!’ The light went indoors again. “That demonstration up- 
stream is increasing. Colonel Evans will need support.” 

“‘Ves, we must have orders shortly.”’ Turning in his saddle, Cary 
gazed across the stream. ‘‘Andrew Porter and Burnside are some- 
where over there. I wonder if Burnside remembers the last time he 
was in Virginia!”’ He laughed. “‘Dabney Maury’s wedding in ’52 at 
Cleveland, and Burnside happy as a king singing ‘Old Virginia 
never tire!’ stealing kisses from the bridesmaids, hunting with the 
hardest, dancing till cockcrow, and asking, twenty times a day, ‘Why 
don’t we do like this in Indiana?’ I wonder —I1 wonder!” He 


THE DOGS OF WAR 75 


laughed again. “Good old Burnside! It’s an odd world we live in, 
general!”’ 

“The world, sir, is as God made it and as Satan darkened it.” 

Cary regarded him somewhat whimsically. “Well, we’ll agree on 
God now, and perhaps before this struggle’s over, we’ll agree on 
Satan. That firing’s growing louder, I think. There’s a cousin 
of mine in the 65th — yonder by the colours! May I speak to him?” 

“Certainly, sir. I have noticed Captain Cleave. His men obey 
him with readiness.”” He beckoned, and when Cleave came up, 
turned away with Little Sorrel to the edge of the stream. The kins- 
men clasped hands. 

“How are you, Richard?” 

“Very well, Fauquier. And you ?” 

“Very well, too, I suppose. I have n’t asked. You’ve got a fine, 
tall company!” 

Cleave, turning, regarded his men with almost a love-light in his 
eyes. “By God, Fauquier, we’ll win if stock can doit! It’s going to 
make a legend — this army!”’ 

“T believe that you are right. When you were a boy you used 
to dream artillery.” 

“T dream it still. Sooner or later, by hook or by crook, I’ll get 
into that arm. It was n’t feasible this spring.” 

His cousin looked at him with the affection, half humorous and 
wholly tender, with which he regarded most of his belongings in life. 
“T always liked you, Richard. Now don’t you go get killed in this 
unnatural war! The South’s going to need every good man she’s got 
—and more beside! Where is Will ?” 

“In the 2d. I wanted him nearer me, but ’t would have broken 
his heart to leave his company. Edward is with the Rifles?”’ 

“Ves, adding lustre to the ranks. I came upon him yesterday 
cutting wood for his mess. ‘ Why don’t you make Jeames cut the 
wood?’ I asked. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘you see it hurts his pride — and, 
beside, some one must cook. Jeames cooks.’”? Cary laughed. “I 
left him getting up his load and hurrying off to roll call. Phoebus 
Apollo swincking for Mars!—I was at Greenwood the other day. 
They all sent you their love.” 

A colour came into Cleave’s dark cheek. “Thank them for me 
when you write. Only the ladies are there?” 


76 THE LONG ROLL 


“Ves. I told them it had the air of a Spanish nunnery. Maury 
Stafford is with Magruder on the Peninsula.” 

(<9 Yes.” 

‘Judith had a letter from him. He was in the affair at Bethel. — 
What’s this? Orders for us all to move, I hope!”’ 

A courier had galloped into the wood. “General Jackson? Where 
is General Jackson?” A hundred hands having pointed out Little 
Sorrel and his rider, he arrived breathless, saluted, and extended a 
gauntleted hand with a folded bit of paper. Jackson took and 
opened the missive with his usual deliberation, glanced over the con- 
tents, and pushed Little Sorrel nearer to Fauquier Cary. ‘‘General,”’ 
he read aloud, though in a low voice. ‘‘the signal officer reports a 
turning column of the enemy approaching Sudley Ford two miles above 
the Stone Bridge. You will advance with all speed to the support of the 
endangered left. Bee and Bartow, the Hampton Legion and the Vir- 
ginia Legion will receive like orders. J. E. Johnston, General Com- 
manding.”’ 

The commander of the Virginia Legion gathered up his reins. 
“Thank you, general! Aw revoir — and laurels to us all!” Witha 
wave of his hand to Cleave, he was gone, crashing through the thin- 
ning pines to the broomsedge field and his waiting men. 

It was nine o’clock, hot and clear, the Stone Bridge three miles 
away. The First Brigade went at a double quick, guided by the 
sound of musketry, growing in volume. The pines were left behind; 
oak copse succeeded, then the up and down of grassy fields. Wooden 
fences stretched across the way, streamlets presented themselves, 
here and there gaped a ravine, ragged and deep. On and on and over 
all! Bee and Bartow were ahead, and Hampton and the Virginia 
Legion. The sound of the guns grew louder. ‘‘Evans has n’t got but 
six regiments. Get on, men, get on!” 

The fields were very rough, all things uneven and retarding. Only 
the sun had no obstacles: he rose high, and there set in a scorching 
day. The men climbed a bank of red earth, and struck across a great 
cornfield. They stumbled over the furrows, they broke down the 
stalks, they tore aside the intertwining small, blue morning-glories. 
Wet with the dew of the field, they left it and dipped again into 
woods. The shade did not hold; now they were traversing an im- 
mense and wasted stretch where the dewberry caught at their 


THE DOGS OF WAR - 


ankles and the sun had an unchecked sway. Ahead the firing grew 
louder. Get on, men, get on! 

Allan Gold, hurrying with his hurrying world, found in life this 
July morning something he had not found before. Apparently there 
were cracks in the firmament through which streamed a dazzling 
light, an invigorating air. After all, there was something wide, it 
seemed, in war, something sweet. It was bright and hot — they 
were going, clean and childlike, to help their fellows at the bridge. 
When, near at hand, a bugle blew, high as a lark above the stress, 
he followed the sound witha clear delight. He felt no fatigue, and 
he had never seen the sky so blue, the woods so green. Chance 
brought him for a moment in line with his captain. ‘‘ Well, Allan?”’ 

“‘T seem to have waked up,” said Allan, then, very soberly. “I 
am going to like this thing.” 

Cleave laughed. ‘You have n’t the air of a Norse sea king for 
nothing!”” They dipped into a bare, red gully, scrambled up the 
opposite bank, and fought again with the dewberry vines. “When 
the battle’s over you’re to report to General Jackson. Say that I 
sent you — that you’re the man he asked for this morning.” 

The entangling vines abruptly gave up the fight. A soft hillside 
of pasturage succeeded, down which the men ran like schoolboys. 
A gray zigzag of rail fence, a little plashy stream, another hillside, 
and at the top, planted against a horizon of haze and sound, a 
courier, hatless, upon a reeking horse. “‘General Jackson?” 

ges at 1 ate 

“McDowell has crossed at Sudley Ford. The attack on the Stone 
Bridge is a feint. Colonel Evans has left four companies there, and 
with the 4th South Carolina and the Louisiana Tigers is getting into 
position across Young’s Branch, upon the Mathews Hill. Colonel 
Evans’s compliments, and he says for God’s sake to come on!” 

“Very good, sir. General Jackson’s compliments, and I am 
coming.” 

The courier turned, spurred his horse, and was gone. Jackson 
rode down the column. ‘‘ You’re doing well, men, but you’ve got to 
do better. Colonel Evans says for God’s sake to come on!” 

That hilltop crossed at a run, they plunged again into the trough 
of those low waves. The First Brigade had proved its mettle, but 
here it began to lose. Men gasped, wavered, fell out of line and were 


78 THE LONG ROLL 


left behind. In Virginia the July sunshine is no bagatelle. It beat 
hard to-day, and to many in these ranks there was in this July Sun- 
day an awful strangeness. At home — ah, at home! — crushed ice 
and cooling fans,a pleasant and shady ride to a pleasant, shady 
church, a little dozing through a comfortable sermon, then friends 
and crops and politics in the twilight dells of an old churchyard, 
then home, and dinner, and wide porches — Ah, that was the way, 
that was the way. Close up, there! Don’t straggle, men, don’t 
straggle ! 

They were out now upon another high field, carpeted with yellow- 
ing sedge, dotted over with young pines. The 65th headed the 
column. Lieutenant Coffin of Company A was a busy officer, active 
as a jumping-jack, half liked and half distasted by the men. The 
need of some breathing time, however slight, was now so imperative 
that at a stake and rider fence, overgrown with creepers, a five 
minutes’ halt was ordered. The fence ran at right angles, and all 
along the column the men dropped upon the ground, in the shadow 
of the vines. Coffin threw himself down by the Thunder Run 
men. “Billy Maydew!”’ 

mY GES Sth; 

“What have you got that stick tied to your gun for? Throw it 
away! I should think you’d find that old flintlock heavy enough 
without shouldering a sapling besides!”’ 

Billy regarded with large blue eyes his staff for a young Hercules. 
“°T ain’t a mite in my way, lieutenant. I air a-goin’ to make a 
notch on it for every Yank I kill. When we get back to Thunder 
Run I air a-goin’ to hang it over the fireplace. I reckon it air 
a-goin’ to look right interestin’. Pap, he has a saplin’ marked for 
b’ar an’ wolves, an’ gran’pap he has one his pap marked for In- 
dians —”’ 

“Throw it away!” said Coffin sharply. “It is n’t regular. Do as 
I tell you.” 

Billy stared. “But I don’t want to. It air my stick, an’ I air 
a-goin’ to hang it over the fireplace —”’ 

The heat, the sound in front, all things, made Coffin fretful. He 
rose from the fence corner. ‘‘ Throw that stick away, or I’ll put you 
in the guardhouse! This ain’t Thunder Run — and you men have 
got to learn a thing or two! Come now!” 


THE DOGS OF WAR 79 


“T won’t,” said Billy. “An’ if ’t were Thunder Run, you would n’t 
dar’ reeset 

Allan Gold drew himself over the grass and touched the boy’s 
arm. ‘‘Look here, Billy! We’re going into battle in a minute, and 
you want to be there, don’t you? The lieutenant’s right — that oak 
tree surely will get in your way! Let’s see how far you can throw it. 
There’s plenty more saplings in the woods!”’ 

“Let him alone, Gold,” said the lieutenant sharply. “Do as I 
order you, Billy Maydew!”’ 

Billy rose, eighteen years old, and six feet tall. “If it’s jest the 
same to you, lieutenant,” he said politely, “I’ll break it into bits 
first. Thar are time when I jest hone to feel my hands on somethin’ 
brittle!’”” He put the thick sapling across his knee like a sword, 
broke it in twain, broke in their turn the two halves, and tossed the 
four pieces over the fence. “Thar, now! It’s did.’”’ Moving back to 
Allan’s side, he threw himself down upon the grass. “‘When’s this 
hell-fired fightin’ goin’ to begin? I don’t ask anything better, jest at 
this minute, than to encounter a rattler!” 

The sound ahead swelled suddenly into loud and continuous fir- 
ing. Apparently Evans had met the turning column. Fall in, men, 
fall in! 

The First Brigade rose to its feet, left the friendly fence, and 
found itself upon a stretch of road, in a dust cloud that neatly capped 
all previous ills. At some distance rose the low hill, covered, upon 
this side, by a second growth of pines. “That’s the Henry Hill,” 
said the guide with the 65th. “The house just this side is the Lewis 
house — ‘Portici,’ they call it. The top of the hill is a kind of pla- 
teau, with deep gulleys across it. Nearly in the middle is the Widow 
Henry’s house, and beyond it the house of the free negro Robinson. 
Chinn’s house is on the other side, near Chinn’s Branch. It’s called 
the Henry Hill, and Mrs. Henry is old and bedridden. I don’t 
know what she’ll do, anyway! The hill’s most level on top, as I said, 
but beyond the Henry House it falls right down, quite steep, to the 
Warrenton turnpike. Across that there’s marshy ground, and 
Young’s Branch, with the Stone House upon it, and beyond the 
branch there’s Mathews Hill, just around the branch. Yes, sir, 
this back side’s wooded, but you see the cleared ground when you 
get on top.” 


80 THE LONG ROLL 


A bowshot from the wood, the head of the column was met by a 
second courier, a boy from the Alabama River, riding like Jehu, pale 
with excitement. “‘When you get to the top of the hill you’ll see! 
They’re thicker than bees from a sweet gum — they’re thicker than 
bolls in a cotton-field! They’ve got three thousand Regulars, and 
fifteen thousand of the other kind, and they’re cutting Evans to 
pieces!’’ He pulled himself together and saluted. ‘General Bee’s 
compliments to General Jackson, and he is going into action.” 

“General Jackson’s compliments, and I will support him.” 

The 65th entered the wood. The trees were small — bundles of 
hard, bright green needles aloft on slender trunks, out of which, in 
the strong sunshine, resin was oozing. They were set well apart, the 
grass beneath dry and slippery, strewn with cones. The sky was 
intensely blue, the air hot and without moisture, the scent of the 
pines strong in the nostril. Another step and the 65th came upon 
the wounded of Evans’s brigade. An invisible line joined with sud- 
denness the early morning picture, the torn and dying mule, the 
headless driver, to this. Breathless, heated, excited, the 65th swept 
on, yet it felt the cold air from the cavern. It had, of course, seen 
accidents, men injured in various ways, but never had it viewed so 
many, nor so much blood, and never before had it rushed past the 
helpless and the agonizing. There were surgeons and ambulances — 
there seemed to be a table of planks on which the worst cases were 
laid — the sufferers had help, of course, a little help. A Creole 
from Bayou Téche lay writhing, shot through the stomach, beneath 
a pine. He was raving. “ Mélanie, Mélanie, donnez-moi de l'eau! 
Mélanie, Mélanie! donnez-moi de l’eau!”’ 

Stragglers were coming over the hilltop — froth and spume 
thrown from a great wave somewhere beyond that cover — men 
limping, men supported by their comrades, men gasping and covered 
with sweat, men livid with nausea, men without arms, men carrying 
it off with bluster, and men too honestly frightened for any pretence. 
A number were legitimately there, wounded, ill, exhausted, useless 
on the field of battle; others were malingerers, and some were cow- 
ards — cowards for all time, or cowards for this time only. A minor- 
ity was voluble. “ You all think yo’ going to a Sunday-school picnic, 
don’t you? Well, you ain’t. Just you all wait until you get to the 
top of the hill! What are you going to see? You’re going to see 


THE DOGS OF WAR 81 


hell’s mouth, and the devil wearing blue! We’ve been there — 
we’ve been in hell since daybreak — damned if we have n’t! Evans 
all cut to pieces! Bee and Bartow have gone in now. They’|I find it 
hell, jest like we did. Twenty thousand of them dressed in blue.” 
A man began to weep. “All cut to pieces. Major Wheat’s lying 
there in a little piney wood. He was bleeding and bleeding —I saw 
him — but I reckon the blood has stopped. And we were all so 
hungry. I didn’t get no breakfast. There’s a plateau and the 
Henry House, and then there’s a dip and Young’s Branch, and 
then there’s a hill called the Mathews Hill. We were there — on the 
Mathews Hill — we ain’t on it now.”’ Two officers appeared, one 
on foot, the other mounted, both pale with rage. “You’ll be on 
it again, if you have to be dragged by the heels! Get back there, you 
damned, roustabout cowards!’’ The mounted man laid about him 
with his sabre; the lieutenant, afoot, wrenched from a strapping 
fellow his Belgian musket and applied the stock to the recreant’s 
shoulders. The 65th left the clamour, swept onward between the 
pines, and presently, in the narrow road, met a braver sort, men 
falling back, but without panic. “Hot as hell, sir, on the other side 
of the hill! No, we’re not running. I’ll get the men back. It’s just 
that Sykes was in front of us with his damned Regulars. Beg 
your pardon, general —? General Jackson. I'll get the men back 
— damned — blessed — if I don’t, sir! Form right here, men! The 
present’s the best time, and here’s the best place.”’ 

At the crest of the hill the 65th came upon Imboden’s battery — 
the Staunton Artillery —four smoothbore, brass six-pounders, 
guns, and caissons drawn by half the proper number of horses — the 
rest being killed — and conducted by wounded, exhausted, powder- 
grimed and swearing artillerymen. Imboden, in front, was setting 
the pitch. “ ! 1”? Jackson 
checked Little Sorrel and withered the battery and its captain. 
“What are you doing here, sir, blaspheming and retreating? Out- 
facing your God with your back to the enemy! What —” 

Imboden, an entirely gallant man, hastened to explain. “ Beg par- 
don, general! Bad habit, I acknowledge, but the occasion excuses — 
My battery has spent the morning, sir, on the Henry Hill, and 
damn me, if it has n’t been as lonely there as the Ancient Mariner! 
No support — not a damned infantryman in sight for the last half 





82 THE LONG ROLL 


hour! Alone down there by the Robinson House, and Ricketts and 
Griffin — Regulars by the Lord! — and the devil knows how many 
batteries beside playing on us with Parrotts and twelve-pounder 
howitzers like all the fountains at Versailles! The ground looks as 
though it had been rooted by hogs! No support, and no orders, and 
on the turnpike a bank of blue massing to rush my guns! And my 
ammunition out, and half my horses down — and if General Bee sent 
me orders to move I never got them!’’ He stamped upon the ground, 
wiping the blood from a wound in his head. “J could n’t hold the 
Henry Hill! J could n’t fight McDowell with one battery — no, by 
God, not even if ’t was the Staunton Artillery! We had to move 
out.” 

Jackson eyed him, unmollified. ‘‘I have never seen the occasion, 
Captain Imboden, that justified profanity. As for support — I will 
support your battery. Unlimber right here.”’ 

Imboden unlimbered, placing his guns below the pine wood upon 
the summit. The First Brigade wheeled into line to the left. Here 
it was met by an aide. “General Jackson, hold your troops in 
reserve until Bee and Bartow need support — then give it to them!” 
The First Brigade deployed in the wood. About the men was still 
the pine thicket, blazed upon by the sun, shrilled in by winged 
legions; before them was the field of Bull Run. A tableland, cut by 
gullies, furred with knots of pine and oak, held in the middle a flower 
garden, a few locust trees, and a small house — the Henry House — 
in which, too old and ill to be borne away to safety, lay a withered 
woman, awaiting death. Beyond the house the ground fell sharply. 
At the foot of the hill ran the road, and beyond the road were the 
marshy banks of a little stream, and on the other side of the stream 
rose the Mathews Hill. Ranged upon this height Ricketts and Grif- 
fin and Arnold and many another Federal battery were sending 
shrieking shells against the Henry Hill. North and east and west of 
the batteries ran long radii of blue, pointed with bright banners, and 
out of the hollow between the hills came a smoke and noise as of the 
nethermost pit. There, beneath that sulphurous cloud, the North 
and the South were locked in an embrace that was not of love. 


ig Fad a Bee 
A CHRISTENING 


MBODEN had been joined by the Rockbridge Artillery and the 

Alexandria and Loudoun batteries. A little later there came up 

two of the New Orleans guns. All unlimbered in front of the 
pine wood where was couched the First Brigade, trained the sixteen 
guns upon the Mathews Hill and began firing. Griffin and Ricketts 
and Arnold answered with Parrotts and howitzers, throwing elon- 
gated, cylindrical shell that came with the screech of a banshee. But 
the Federal range was too long, and the fuses of many shells were 
uncut. Two of Rockbridge’s horses were killed, a caisson of Stan- 
ard’s exploded, scorching the gunners, a lieutenant was wounded in 
the thigh, but the batteries suffered less than did the infantry in the 
background. Here, more than one exploding horror wrought de- 
struction. Immediately in rear of the guns were posted the 4th, the 
27th, and the 65th. To the right hand was the sth, to the left the 2d 
and the 33d. Inall the men lay down in ranks, just sheltered by the 
final fringe of pines. The younger officers stood up, or, stepping into 
the clearing, seated themselves not without ostentation upon pine 
stumps, to the laudable end that the enemy should know where to 
find them. Jackson rode back and forth behind the guns. 

The thundering voices grew louder, shaking the hills. The First 
Brigade could not see the infantry, swept now from the Mathews 
Hill and engaged about the turnpike and the stream. By stretching 
necks it saw a roof of smoke, dun-coloured, hiding pandemonium. 
Beneath that deeper thunder of the guns, the crackling, unintermit- 
tent sound of musketry affected the ear like the stridulation of giant 
insects. The men awaiting their turn beneath the pines, breathing 
quick, watching the shells, moved their heads slightly to and fro. 
In front, outdrawn upon a little ridge, stood the guns and boomed 
defiance. Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New 
Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were something 
ancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beard- 


84 THE LONG ROLL 


less, powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and 
steady of eye and hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, 
showed in the van of Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe- 
quelling Hector might say “They will do well.” 

General T. J. Jackson on Little Sorrel went up and down between 
the speaking guns and the waiting infantry. The men, from their 
couch upon the needles, watched him. Before their eyes war was 
transfiguring him, and his soldiers called him “‘Old Jack”? and made 
no reservation. The awkward figure took on a stalwart grace, the 
old uniform, the boots, the cap, grew classically right. The inner 
came outward, the atmosphere altered, and the man was seen as he 
rode in the plane above. A shell from Ricketts came screaming, 
struck and cut down a young pine. In falling, the tree caught and 
hurt a man or two. Another terror followed and exploded overhead, 
a fragment inflicting upon a bugler of the 65th a ghastly wound. 
“Steady, men, steady! — all’s well,” said Old Jack. He threw up 
his left hand, palm out, — an usual gesture, — and turned to speak 
to Imboden, whose profanity he had apparently forgiven. As in any 
other July hour a cloud of gnats might have swum above that hill, 
so, on this one summer day, death-dealing missiles filled the air. 
Some splinter from one of these struck the lifted hand. Jackson let 
it fall, the blood streaming. Imboden uttered an ejaculation. “It’s 
nothing,” said the other; then, with slow earnestness, ‘‘Captain 
Imboden, I would give — I will give — for this cause every drop of 
blood that courses through my heart.” He drew out a handkerchief, 
wrapped it around the wound, and rode on down the right of his line. 

Up to meet him from the foot of the hill, out of the dun smoke 
hiding the wrestle, came ata gallop a roan horse bearing a rider tall 
and well made, black-eyed and long-haired, a bright sash about his 
waist, a plumed hat upon his head. Panting, he drew rein beside 
Little Sorrel. “I am Bee. — General Jackson, we are driven — we 
are overwhelmed! My God! only Evans and Bartow and I against 
the whole North and the Regulars! We are being pushed back — 
you must support.—In three minutes the battle will be upon 
this hill — Hunter and Heintzleman’s divisions. They’re hot and 
huzzaing — they think they’ve got us fast! They have, by God! if 
our troops don’t come up!” He turned his horse. “But you’ll sup- 
port — we count on you —”’ 


A CHRISTENING 85 


“Count only upon God, General Bee,” said Jackson. “But I will 
give them the bayonet.”’ 

Bee struck spur into the roan and galloped across the plateau. 
Out of one of the furrowing ravines, a sunbaked and wrinkled trough 
springing from the turnpike below and running up and across the 
Henry Hill toward the crest of pine and oak, came now a handful of 
men, grey shadows, reeling, seeking the forest and night. Another 
followed — another — then a stream, a grey runlet of defeat which 
grew in proportions. A moment more, and the ravine, fed from the 
battle-ground below, overflowed. The red light shifted to the Henry 
Hill. It was as though a closed fan, laid upon that uneven ground, 
had suddenly opened. The rout was not hideous. The men had 
fought long and boldly, against great odds; they fled now before the 
storm, but all cohesion was not lost, nor presence of mind. Some 
turned and fired, some listened to their shouting officer, and strove 
to form about the tossed colours, some gave and took advice. But 
every gun of the Federal batteries poured shot and shell upon that 
hilltop, and the lines of blue had begun to climb. The disorder in- 
creased; panic might come like the wind in the grass. Bee reached 
the choked ravine, pulled up his great roan. He was a man tall and 
large, and as he rose in his stirrups and held his sword aloft, stand- 
ing against the sky, upon the rim of the ravine, he looked colossal, a 
bronze designed to point the way. He cried aloud, ‘Look! Yonder 
is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!”’ 
As he spoke a shell struck him. He fell, mortally wounded. 

The eyes of the men in the cleft below had followed the pointed 
sword. The hilltop was above them, and along the summit, just in 
advance of a pine wood, ran a stone wall, grey, irregular, touched 
here by sunlight, there by shadow, and shrouded in part by the 
battle smoke. Some one had planted upon it a flag. For a full mo- 
ment the illusion held, then the wall moved. A captain of the 4th 
Alabama, hoarse with shouting, found voice once more. ‘“‘God! We 
are n’t beaten! Talk of Birnam wood! The stone wall’s coming!” 

Up and out of the ravine, widening like an opening fan, pressed 
the disordered troops. The plateau was covered by chaos come again. 
Officers, raging, shouted orders, ran to and fro, gesticulated with 
their swords. A short line was formed, another; they dissolved 
before a third could be added. All voices were raised; there was a 


86 THE LONG ROLL 


tumult of cries, commands, protestations, adjurations, and refusals. 
Over all screamed the shells, settled the smoke. Franklin, Willcox, 
Sherman, and Porter, pressing the Federal advantage, were now 
across the turnpike. Beneath their feet was the rising ground — a 
moment more, and they would leap victorious up the ragged slope. 
The moment was delayed. With a rending sound as of a giant web 
torn asunder, the legions of Hampton and Cary, posted near the 
house of the free negro Robinson, came into action and held in check 
the four brigades. 

High upon the plateau, near Jackson’s line, above the wild con- 
fusion of the retreating troops, appeared in the blaze of the midday 
sun, hatless, on steeds reeking from the four miles’ gallop from that 
centre where the battle did not join to this left where it did, the gen- 
erals Johnston and Beauregard. Out of the red lightning, the thun- 
der, the dust and the smoke, above the frenzied shouting and the 
crying of the wounded, their presence was electrically known. A 
cheer rushed from the First Brigade; at the guns Rockbridge, Staun- 
ton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans took up the cry, tossed 
it with grape and canister across to the opposite hill. Bee, Bartow, 
and Evans, exhausted, shattered, wavering upwards toward the for- 
est, rest, cessation from long struggle, heard the names and took 
fresh heart. The two were not idle, but in the crucial moment 
turned the scale. Black danger hemmed their cause. The missing 
brigade of the Shenandoah was no man knew where. At Mitchell’s 
and Blackburn’s fords, Ewell, D. R. Jones, Bonham, and Long- 
street were engaged in a demonstration in force, retaining upon that 
front the enemy’s reserve. Holmes and Jubal Early were on their 
way to the imperilled left, but the dust cloud that they raised was 
yet distant. Below the two generals were broken troops, men raw to 
the field, repulsed, driven, bleeding, and haggard, full on the edge of 
headlong flight; lower, in the hollow land, McDowell’s advance, fill- 
ing the little valley, islanding the two fighting legions, and now, a 
mounting tide, attacking the Henry Hill. At Beauregard’s order 
the regimental colours were advanced, and the men adjured to rally 
about them. Fiery, eloquent, of French descent and impassioned, 
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard rose in his stirrups and talked of 
la gloire, of home, and of country. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
and Louisiana listened, cheered, and began to reform. Johnston, 


A CHRISTENING 87 


Scotch, correct, military, the Regular in person, trusted to the hilt 
by the men he led, seized the colours of the 4th Alabama, raised 
them above his grey head, spurred his war horse, and in the hail of 
shot and shell established the line of battle. Decimated as they were, 
raw volunteers as they were, drawn from peaceful ways to meet the 
purple dragon, fold on fold of war, the troops of Bee, Bartow, and 
Evans rallied, fell into line, and stood. The 49th Virginia came upon 
the plateau from Lewis Ford — at its head Ex-Governor William 
Smith. ‘Extra Billy,’ old political hero, sat twisted in his saddle, 
and addressed his regiment. ‘‘ Now, boys, you’ve just got to kill the 
ox for this barbecue! Now, mind you, I ain’t going to have any 
backing out! We ain’t West P’inters, but, thank the Lord, we’re 
men! When it’s all over we’ll have a torchlight procession and write 
to the girls! Now, boys, you be good to me, and I’ll be good to you. 
Lord, children, I want to be proud of you! And I ain’t Regular, but 
I know Old Virginny. Tom Scott, you beat the drum real loud, and 
James, you swing that flag so high the good Lord’s got to see it! — 
Here’s the West P’inters — here’s the generals! Now, boys, just 
see how loud you can holler!” 

The 49th went into line upon Gartrell’s right, who was upon 
Jackson’s left. Beauregard paused to speak to that brigadier, ad- 
vanced upon Little Sorrel in front of the 65th. An aide addressed 
the latter’s colonel. ‘General Bee christened this brigade just 
before he fell. He called it a stone wall. If he turns out a true 
prophet I reckon the name will stick.” A shell came hurtling, fell, 
exploded, and killed under him Beauregard’s horse. He mounted 
the aide’s and galloped back to Johnston, near the Henry House. 
Here there was a short council. Had the missing brigade, the 
watched for, the hoped for, reached Manassas? Ewell and Early 
had been ordered up from Union Mills. Would they arrive upon 
this hill in time? What of the Stone Bridge, now left almost unde- 
fended? What of Blackburn and Mitchell’s fords, and Longstreet’s 
demonstration, and the enemy’s reserves across Bull Run? What 
best disposition of the strength that might arrive? The conference 
was short. Johnston, the senior with the command of the whole 
field, galloped off to the Lewis House, while Beauregard retained the 
direction of the contest on the Henry Hill. Below it the two legions 
still held the blue wave from mounting. 


88 THE LONG ROLL 


Ricketts and Griffin upon the Mathews Hill ceased firing — 
greatly to the excitement of Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alex- 
andria, and New Orleans. The smoke slightly lifted. ‘“What’re 
they doing? They’ve got their horses — they’re limbering up! What 
in hell! — d’ ye suppose they’ve had enough? No! Great day in 
the morning! They’re coming up here!” 

Ricketts and Griffin, cannoneers on caissons, horses urged to a 
gallop, thundered down the opposite slope, across Young’s Branch 
and the turnpike. A moment and they were lost to sight, another 
and the straining horses and the dust and the guns and the fighting 
men about them showed above the brow of the Henry Hill. Out 
they thundered upon the plateau and wheeled into battery very 
near to the Henry House. Magnificence but not war! They had no 
business there, but they had been ordered and they came. With a 
crash as of all the thunders they opened at a thousand feet, full upon 
the Confederate batteries and upon the pine wood where lay the 
First Brigade. 

Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans, 
wet with sweat, black with powder, sponging, ramming, priming, 
aiming, firing, did well with the bass of that hill-echoing tune. A 
lieutenant of the Washington Artillery made himself heard above 
the roar. “Short range! We’ve got short range at last! Now, old 
smoothbores, show what you are made of!’ The smoothbores 
showed. Griffin and Ricketts answered, Jackson’s sharpshooters 
took a part, the uproar became frightful. The captain of the Rock- 
bridge Artillery was a great-nephew of Edmund Pendleton, a gradu- 
ate of West Point and the rector of the Episcopal Church in Lexing- 
ton. He went back and forth among his guns. “ Fire! and the Lord 
have mercy upon their souls. — Fire! and the Lord have mercy 
upon their souls.” With noise and a rolling smoke and a scorch- 
ing breath and a mad excitement that annihilated time and re- 
duced with a thunderclap every series of happenings into one all- 
embracing moment, the battle mounted and the day swung past 
its burning noon. 

The 11th and 14th New York had been pushed up the hill to the © 
support of Ricketts and Griffin. Behind them showed in strength 
other climbing muskets. In the vale below Hampton and Cary had 
made diversion, had held the brigades in check, while upon the pla- 


A CHRISTENING 89 


teau the Confederates rallied. The two legions, stubborn and gal- 
lant, suffered heavily. With many dead and many wounded they 
drew off at last. The goal of the Henry Hill lay clear before Mc- 
Dowell. 

He had brigades enough for the advance that should set all the 
bells of Washington ringing for victory. His turning column at 
Sudley Ford had numbered eighteen thousand men. But Howard 
was somewhere in the vague distance, Burnside was “resting,”’ 
Keyes, who had taken part in the action against Hampton, was now 
astray in the Bull Run Valley, and Schenck had not even crossed the 
stream. There were the dead, too, the wounded and the stragglers. 
All told, perhaps eleven thousand men attacked the Henry Hill. 
They came on confidently, flushed with victory, brilliant as tropical 
birds in the uniforms so bright and new, in the blue, in the gold, in 
the fiery, zouave dress, in the Garibaldi shirt, in the fez, the Scotch 
bonnet, the plume, in all the militia pomp and circumstance of that 
somewhat theatrical ““On to Richmond.” With gleaming muskets 
and gleaming swords and with the stars and stripes above them, 
they advanced, huzzaing. Above them, on that plateau, ranged 
beneath the stars and bars, there awaited the impact six thousand 
and five hundred Confederates with sixteen guns. Three thousand 
of the troops were fresh; three thousand had been long and heavily 
engaged, and driven from their first position. 

Rockbridge and New Orleans and their fellows worked like grey 
automata about their belching guns. They made a dead line for the 
advance to cross. Ricketts and Griffin answered with their howling 
shells — shells that burst above the First Brigade. One stopped 
short of the men in battle. It entered the Henry House, burst, and 
gave five wounds to the woman cowering in her bed. Now she lay 
there, dying, above the armies, and the flower-beds outside were 
trampled, and the boughs of the locust trees strewn upon the earth. 

Hunter and Heintzleman mounted the ridge of the hill. With an 
immense volley of musketry the battle joined upon the plateau that 
was but five hundred yards across. The Fire Zouaves, all red, ad- 
vanced like a flame against the 4th Alabama, crouched behind 
scrub oak to the left of the field. The 4th Alabama fired, loaded, 
fired again. The zouaves broke, fleeing in disorder toward a piece of 
woods. Out from the shadow of the trees came Jeb Stuart with 


90 THE LONG ROLL 


two hundred cavalrymen. The smoke was very thick; it was not 
with ease that one told friend from foe. In the instant of encounter 
the beau sabreur thought that he spoke to Confederates. He made 
his horse to bound, he rose in his stirrups, he waved his plumed hat, 
he shouted aloud in his rich and happy voice, ‘Don’t run, boys! We 
are here!”’ To his disappointment the magic fell short. The “boys” 
ran all the faster. Behind him, a trooper lifted his voice. “‘They’re 
not ours! They’re Yankees! Charge them, sir, charge!” Stuart 
charged. 

Along the crest of the Henry Hill the kneeling ranks of the First 
Brigade fired and loaded and fired again. Men and horses fell around 
the guns of Ricketts and Griffin, but the guns were not silenced. 
Rockbridge and Loudoun and their fellows answered with their 
Virginia Military Institute six-pounders, with their howitzers, with 
their one or two Napoleons, but Ricketts and Griffin held fast. The 
great shells came hurtling, death screaming its message and sweep- 
ing the pine wood. The stone wall suffered; here and there the units 
dropped from place. Jackson, holding up his wounded hand, came 
to the artillery. “Get these guns out of my way. I am going to 
give them the bayonet.” The bugler put the bugle to his lips. 
The guns limbered up, moving out by the right flank and taking 
position elsewhere upon the plateau. Jackson returned to his troops. 
“‘Fix bayonets! Now, men, charge and take those batteries!” 

The First Brigade rose from beneath the pines. It rose, it ad- 
vanced between the moving guns, it shouted. The stone wall 
became an avalanche, and started down the slope. It began 
crescent-wise, for the pine wood where it had lain curved around 
Ricketts and Griffin like a giant’s half-closed hand. From the finger 
nearest the doomed batteries sprang the 33d Virginia. In the dust 
of the field all uniforms were now of one neutral hue. Griffin trained 
his guns upon the approaching body, but his chief stopped him. 
“They ’re our own, man! —a supporting regiment!” The 33d 
Virginia came on, halted at two hundred feet, and poured upon the 
batteries a withering fire. Alas for Ricketts and Griffin, brave men 
handling brave guns! Their cannoneers fell, and the scream of their 
horses shocked the field. Ricketts was badly wounded; his lieuten- 
ant Ramsay lay dead. The stone wall blazed again. The Federal 
infantry supporting the guns broke and fled in confusion. Other 


A CHRISTENING gi 


regiments — Michigan and Minnesota this time— came up the 
hill. A grey-haired officer — Heintzleman — seated sideways in his 
saddle upon a hillock, appealing, cheering, commanding, was con- 
spicuous for his gallant bearing. The 33d, hotly pushed, fell back 
into the curving wood, only to emerge again and bear down upon 
the prize of the guns. The whole of the First Brigade was now in 
action and the plateau of the Henry Hill roared like the forge of 
Vulcan when it welded the armour of Mars. It was three in the 
afternoon of midmost July. There arose smoke and shouts and 
shrieks, the thunder from the Mathews Hill of the North’s uncrip- 
pled artillery, and from the plateau the answering thunder of the 
Southern, with the under song, incessant, of the muskets. Men’s 
tongues clave to the roofs of their mouths, the sweat streamed forth, 
and the sweat dried, black cartridge marks were about their lips, 
and their eyes felt metallic, heated balls distending the socket. 
There was a smell of burnt cloth, of powder, of all heated and 
brazen things, indescribable, unforgettable, the effluvia of the 
battlefield. The palate savoured brass, and there was not a man of 
those thousands who was not thirsty — oh, very, very thirsty! Time 
went in waves with hollows between of negation. A movement took 
hours — surely we have been at it since last year! Another passed 
in a lightning flash. We were there beneath the pines, on the ground 
red-breeched Zouaves and United States Marines, above us a noisy 
shell, the voice of the general coming dry and far like a grasshopper’s 
through the din — we are here in a trampled flower garden, beside 
the stumps of locust trees, in the midst of yells and trampling, hands 
again upon the guns! There was no time between. The men who 
were left of Ricketts and Griffin fought well; they were brave 
fighters. The 2d Wisconsin came up the hill, then the 79th and 
69th New York. An impact followed that seemed to rock the globe. 
Wisconsin and New York retired whence they came, and it was all 
done in a moment. Other regiments took their places. McDowell 
was making a frontal attack and sending in his brigades piecemeal. 
The plateau was uneven; low ridges, shallow hollows, with clumps 
of pine and oak; one saw at a time but a segment of the field. The 
nature of the ground split the troops as with wedges; over all the 
Henry Hill the fighting now became from hand to hand, in the woods 
and in the open, small squad against small squad. That night a man 


92 THE LONG ROLL 


insisted that this phase had lasted twelve hours. He said that he 
remembered how the sun rose over the Henry House, and how, 
when it went down, it left a red wall behind a gun on the Mathews 
Hill — and he had seen both events from a ring of pines out of which 
he, with two others, was keeping twenty Rhode Islanders. 

Ricketts and Griffin, forty men upon the ground, twice that num- 
ber of horses dead or disabled, tried to drag away the guns. Down 
upon them roared the 65th, no alignment, broken and fierce as a 
mountain torrent, as Thunder Run when the rains were out and the 
snows had melted. It took again the guns; it met a regiment from 
the Northwest, also stark fighters and hunters, and turned it back; 
it seized the guns and drew them toward the pine wood. On the other 
side Howard’s Brigade came into action, rising, a cloud of stinging 
bees, over the ridge. Maine and Vermont fell into line, fired, each 
man, twenty rounds. The First Brigade answered at close range. 
All the Henry plateau blazed and thundered. 

From headquarters at the Lewis House a most able mind had 
directed the several points of entrance into battle of the troops 
drawn from the lower fords. The 8th, the 18th, and 28th Virginia, 
Cash and Kershaw of Bonham’s, Fisher’s North Carolina — each 
had come at a happy moment and had given support where support 
was most needed. Out of the southeast arose a cloud of dust, a 
great cloud as of many marching men. It moved rapidly. It ap- 
proached at a double quick, apparently it had several guns at trail. 
Early had not yet come up from Union Mills; was it Early? Could 
it be — could it be from Manassas ? Could tt be the missing brigade ? 
Beauregard, flashing across the plateau like a meteor, lifted himself 
in his stirrups, raised with a shaking hand his field-glasses to his eyes. 
Stonewall Jackson held higher his wounded hand, wrapped in a 
handkerchief no longer white. “It ain’t for the pain, — he’s pray- 
ing,”’ thought the orderly by his side. Over on the left, guarding that 
flank, Jeb Stuart, mounted on a hillock, likewise addressed the 
heavens. ‘Good Lord, I hope it’s Elzey! Oh, good Lord, let it be 
Elzey!” The 49th Virginia was strung behind a rail fence, firing 
from between the grey bars. ‘Extra Billy,’ whose horse had been 
shot an hour before, suddenly appeared in an angle erect upon the 
topmost rails. He gazed, then turned and harangued. “Did n’t I 
fell you, boys? Didn’t I say that the old Manassas Gap ain’t half 


A CHRISTENING 93 


so black as she’s painted? The president of that road is my friend, 
gentlemen, and a better man never mixed a julep! The old 
Manassas Gap’s got them through! It’s a road to be patronized, 
gentlemen! The old Manassas Gap —” 

A hand plucked at his boot. “For the Lord’s sake, governor, 
come down from there, or you’ll be travelling on the Angels’ 
Express!” 

The dust rose higher; there came out of it a sound, a low, hoarse 
din. Maine and Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, 
New York and Rhode Island, saw and heard. There was a waver as of 
grain beneath wind over the field, then the grain stood stiff against 
the wind, and all the muskets flamed again. 

The lost brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, seventeen hun- 
dred infantry and Beckham’s Battery swept by the Lewis House, 
received instructions from Johnston in person, and advanced against 
the enemy’s right flank. Kirby Smith led them. Heated, exhausted, 
parched with thirst, the regiments came upon the plateau. Not till 
then did they see the enemy, the awaited, the dreamed-of foe, the 
giant whose voice they had heard at Manassas. They saw him now, 
and they yelled recognition. From a thousand dusty throats came a 
cry, involuntary, individual, indescribably fierce, a high and shrill 
and wild expression of anger and personal opinion. There was the 
enemy. They saw him, they yelled, — without premeditation, with- 
out codperation, each man for himself, Yaaz, Yai . . . Yaar, Yaat, 
Yai. . . . Yaai/ That cry was to be heard on more than two thou- 
sand battlefields. It lasts with the voice of Stentor, and with the 
horn of Roland. It has gone down to history as the “Rebel yell.” 

As they reached the oak woods Kirby Smith was shot. Desper- 
ately wounded, he fell from his horse. Elzey took command; the 
troops swept out by the Chinn House upon the plateau. Beckham’s 
battery unlimbered and came, with decisive effect, into action. 

McDowell, with a last desperate rally, formed a line of battle, a 
gleaming, formidable crescent, half hid by a cloud of skirmishers. 
Out of the woods by the Chinn House now came Jubal Early, with 
Kemper’s 7th Virginia, Harry Hays’s Louisianians, and Barksdale’s 
13th Mississippi. They took position under fire and opened upon 
the enemy’s right. As they did so Elzey’s brigade, the roth Vir- 
ginia, the 1st Maryland, the 3d Tennessee, the 8th and 2d South 


94 THE LONG ROLL 


Carolina, the 18th and 28th Virginia, and Hampton’s and Cary’s 
legions charged. The First Brigade came down upon the guns for 
the third time, and held them. Stuart, standing in his stirrups and 
chanting his commands, rounded the base of the hill, and completed 
the rout. 

The Federals turned. Almost to a man their officers did well. 
There were many privates of a like complexion. Sykes’ Regulars, not 
now upon the Henry Hill, but massed across the branch, behaved 
throughout the day like trained and disciplined soldiers. No field 
could have witnessed more gallant conduct than that of Griffin and 
Ricketts. Heintzleman had been conspicuously energetic, Franklin 
and Willcox had done their best. McDowell himself had not lacked 
in dash and grit, nor, to say sooth, in strategy. It was the Federal 
tactics that were at fault. But all the troops, barring Sykes and 
Ricketts and the quite unused cavalry, were raw, untried, undisci- 
plined. Few were good marksmen, and, to tell the truth, few were 
possessed of a patriotism that would stand strain. That virtue 
awoke later in the Army of the Potomac; it was not present in force 
on the field of Bull Run. Many were three-months men, their term 
of service about to expire, and in their minds no slightest intention 
of reénlistment. They were close kin to the troops whose term 
expiring on the eve of battle had this morning ‘“‘ marched to the rear 
to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.’’ Many were men and boys 
merely out for a lark and almost ludicrously astonished at the nature 
of the business. New Englanders had come to battle as to a town 
meeting; placid farmers and village youths of the Middle States had 
never placed in the meadows of their imaginations events like these, 
while the more alert and restless folk of the cities discovered that the 
newspapers had been hardly explicit. The men of the Northwest 
had a more adequate conception; there was promise in these of stark 
fighting. To all is to be added a rabble of camp followers, of sutlers, 
musicians, teamsters, servants, congressmen in carriages, even here 
and there a congressman’s wife, all the hurrah and vain parade, the 
strut and folly and civilian ignorance, the unwarlike softness and the 
misdirected pride with which these Greeks had set out to take in 
a night that four-years-distant Troy. Now a confusion fell upon 
them, and a rout such as was never seen again in that war. They 
left the ten guns, mute enough now, they gave no heed to their 


A CHRISTENING 95 


frantic officers, they turned and fled. One moment they stood that 
charge, the next the slopes of the Henry Hill were dark blue with 
fugitives. There was no cohesion; mere inability to find each an un- 
encumbered path crowded them thus. They looked a swarm of bees, 
but there was no Spirit of the Hive. The Confederate batteries 
strewed their path with shot and shell, the wild and singular cry, 
first heard upon that field, rang still within their ears. They reached 
the foot of the hill, the Warrenton turnpike, the Sudley and New- 
market road, and the marshy fields through which flowed Young’s 
Branch. Up to this moment courtesy might have called the move- 
ment a not too disorderly retreat, but now, upon the crowded roads 
and through the bordering meadows, it became mere rout, a panic 
quite simple, naked, and unashamed. In vain the officers ‘com- 
manded and implored, in vain Sykes’ Regulars took position on the 
Mathews Hill, a nucleus around which the broken troops might 
have reformed. The mob had neither instinct nor desire for order. 
The Regulars, retreating finally with the rest, could only guard the 
rear and hinder the Confederate pursuit. The panic grew. Ravens 
in the air brought news, true and false, of the victors. Beckham’s 
battery, screaming upon the heels of the. rout, was magnified a 
hundred-fold; there was no doubt that battalions of artillery were 
hurling unknown and deadly missiles, blocking the way to the Poto- 
mac! Jeb Stuart was following on the Sudley Road, and another 
cavalry fiend — Munford—on the turnpike. Four hundred 
troopers between them? No! Four thousand — and each riding like 
the Headless Horseman with terror in his hand! There was Confeder- 
ate infantry upon the turnpike — a couple of regiments, a legion, a 
battery —they were making for a point they knew, this side Centre- 
ville, where they might intercept the fleeing army. It behoved the 
army to get there first, to cross Bull Run, to cross Cub Run, and to 
reach Centreville with the utmost possible expedition. The ravens 
croaked of the Confederate troops four miles down Bull Run, at the 
lower fords. They would cross, they would fall upon Miles and 
Tyler, they would devour alive the Federal reserves, they would get 
first to Centreville! That catastrophe, at least, the mob did its best 
to prevent. It threw away its muskets, it dropped its colours, it 
lightened itself of accoutrements, it fled as if each tired and inex- 
perienced grey soldier behind it had been Death in the Apocalypse. 


96 THE LONG ROLL 


Each man ran for himself, swore for himself, prayed for himself, 
found in Fate a personal foe, and strove to propitiate her with the 
rags of his courage. The men stumbled and fell, lifted themselves, 
and ran again. Ambulances, wagons, carriages, blocked the road; 
they streamed around and under these. Riderless horses tore the 
veil of blue. Artillery teams, unguided, maddened, infected by all 
this human fear, rent it further, and behind them the folds heard 
again the Confederate yell. Centreville — Centreville first, and a 
little food — all the haversacks had been thrown away — but no 
stopping at Centreville! No! Beyond Centreville the Potomac — 
Washington — home! Home and safety, Maine or Massachusetts, 
New York or Vermont, as the case might be! The sun went down and 
left the fleeing army streaming northward by every road or footpath 
which it conceived might lead to the Potomac. 

In the summer dusk, back at the Lewis House, a breathless 
courier brought to Beauregard a circumstantial statement. ‘From 
Major Rhett at Manassas, general! The Federal Reserves have 
been observed crossing below MacLean’s. A strong column — 
they’ll take us in the rear, or they’ll fall upon Manassas!” That 
McDowell would use his numerous reserves was so probable a card 
that Bonham and Longstreet, started upon the pursuit, were recalled. 
Ewell and Holmes had just reached the battlefield. They were faced 
about, and, Beauregard with them, double-quicked back to Mac- 
Lean’s Ford—to find no Miles or Richardson or Runyon for them to 
attack! It was a mistake and a confusion of identity. The crossing 
troops were Confederates — D. R. Jones returning from the posi- 
tion he had held throughout the day to the southern bank of Bull 
Run. The dark had come, the troops were much exhausted, the 
routed army by now at Centreville. Beauregard did the only thing 
that could be done, — ordered the men to halt and bivouac for the 
night in the woods about the stream. 

Back upon the Sudley Road Stuart and his troopers followed for 
twelve miles the fugitive army. There was a running fight; here and 
there the enemy was cut off; great spoil and many prisoners were 
taken. Encumbered with all of these, Stuart at Sudley Church 
called off the chase and halted for the night. At the bridge over Cub 
Run Munford with a handful of the Black Horse and the Chester- 
field Troop, a part of Kershaw’s regiment and Kemper’s battery 


A CHRISTENING 97 


meeting the retreat as it debouched into the Warrenton turnpike, 
heaped rout on rout, and confounded confusion. A wagon was upset 
upon the bridge, it became impassable, and Panic found that she 
must get away as best she might. She left her congressmen’s car- 
riages, her wagons of subsistence, and her wagons of ammunition, 
her guns and their caissons, her flags and her wounded in ambu- 
lances; she cut the traces of the horses and freed them from pleasure 
carriage, gun carriage, ammunition wagon, and ambulance; with 
these horses and afoot, she dashed through the water of Cub Run, 
and with the long wail of the helpless behind her, fled northward 
through the dusk. A little later, bugles, sounding here and there 
beneath the stars, called off the pursuit. 


The spoil of Manassas included twenty-eight fieldpieces with 
a hundred rounds of ammunition to each gun, thirty-seven caissons, 
six forges, four battery wagons, sixty-four artillery horses, five 
hundred thousand rounds of small arm ammunition, four thousand 
five hundred sets of accoutrements, four thousand muskets, nine 
regimental and garrison flags, pistols, swords, musical instruments, 
knapsacks, canteens, blankets, tents, officers’ luggage, rope, hand- 
cuffs, axes, and intrenching tools, wagons, horses, camp and garri- 
son equipage, hospital stores and subsistence, and one thousand 
four hundred and twenty-one prisoners. 

History has not been backward with a question. Why did not the 
Confederate forces press the pursuit to the Potomac, twenty-five 
miles away? Why did they not cross that river? Why did they not 
take Washington? History depones that it was a terror-stricken 
city and that it might have been stormed, and so, perhaps, the great 
war ended ere it had well begun. Why did you not pursue from 
Manassas to Washington? 

The tongue of the case answers thus: “‘We were a victorious 
army, but we had fought long and hard. We had not many fresh 
troops. Even those which were not engaged had been marching and 
countermarching. The enemy had many more than we — heavy re- 
serves to whom panic might or might not have been communicated. 
These were between us and Centreville, and the night had fallen. 
Our cavalry was the best in the land, but cruelly small in force, and 
very weary by that midnight. We were scant of provisions, scant of 


98 THE LONG ROLL 


transportation, scant of ammunition. What if the Federal reserves 
had not stood, but had fled with the rest, and we had in some 
fashion achieved the Potomac? There were strong works at 
Arlington and Alexandria, lined with troops, and in easy distance 
were Patterson and his unused men. There was a river a mile wide, 
patrolled by gunboats, and beyond it a city with how many troops 
we knew not, certainly with strong earthworks and mounted guns. 
Being only men and not clairvoyants we did not know that the city 
was so crazed with fear that perhaps, after all, had we ever gotten 
there we might have stormed it with a few weary regiments. We 
never saw the like in our own capital at any after date, and we did 
not know. We were under arms from dawn until the stars came out, 
we had fought through the heat of a July day in Virginia, we were 
hungry, we were thirsty, we were drunk with need of rest. Most of 
us were under twenty-four. We had met and vanquished heavy 
odds, but we ourselves, like those who fled, were soldiers all untried. 
Victory disorganized us, as defeat disorganized them. Not in the 
same measure, but to the extent that all commands were much 
broken, men astray in the darkness, seeking their companies, com- 
panies calling out the number of their regiments. Most of us went 
hungry that night. And all around were the dead and wounded, and 
above us, like a pall, the strangeness of this war at last. The July 
night passed like a fevered dream; men sleeping on the earth, men 
seeking their commands, men riding to and fro, men wandering 
with lanterns over the battlefield. At three came down the rain. It 
was as though the heavens were opened. No one had ever seen such 
a downpour. All day long it rained, and in the rain we buried our 
comrades. There were two brothers, Holmes and Tucker Conrad, 
boys from the University. Holmes was shot through the heart, just 
on the edge of a ravine on the Henry Hill. Tucker, across the ravine, 
saw him fall. He was down one side and up the other before a man 
could draw breath. He lifted Holmes, and as he did so, he, too, was 
killed. We found them lying in each other’s arms, Holmes smiling, 
and we buried them so. We buried many friends and comrades and 
kindred — we were all more or less akin — and perhaps, being young 
to war, that solemn battlefield loomed to us so large that it ob- 
structed the view of the routed invasion now across the Potomac, 
out of Virginia. We held then and we hold still, that our generals 


A CHRISTENING 99 


that day were sagacious and brave, and we think history may take 
their word for it that any effective pursuit, looking to the crossing 
of the Potomac, was a military impossibility. It is true that Stone- 
wall Jackson, as history reminds us, was heard to exclaim while the 
surgeon was dressing his hand, “Give me ten thousand fresh troops, 
and I will be in Washington to-morrow!’’ But there were not the 
ten thousand troops to give. 


CHAPTER 1X 


WINCHESTER 


season had proved extraordinarily mild — it seemed Indian 

summer still rather than only a fortnight from Christmas. 
Farming folk prophesied a cold January, while the neighbourhood 
negroes held that the unusual warmth proceeded from the comet 
which blazed this year in the skies. An old woman whom the chil- 
dren called a witch sat in the sun on her doorstep, and shook her 
head at every passer-by. “A green Christmas makes a fat grave- 
yard. — Down, pussy, down, down! — A green Christmas makes a 
fat graveyard. Did ye hear the firing yesterday?” 

An amethyst haze filled the valley town of Winchester. Ordina- 
rily, in weather such as this, the wide streets had a dream quality and 
the gardens where the chrysanthemums yet lingered and the brick 
sidewalks all strewn with russet leaves, and the faint smell of wood 
smoke, and the old gilt of the sunshine, all carried back as to some 
vanished song or story, sweet while it lasted. But if this was true 
once of Winchester, and might be true again, it was hardly true of 
to-day, of Winchester in December 1861; of Winchester with Major- 
General T. J. Jackson, commanding the Department of the Valley, 
quartered in the town, and the Stonewall Brigade, commanded by 
Garnett, encamped upon its edge, and the Valley Troopers com- 
manded by Ashby, flashing by on their way to reconnoitre the Fed- 
ral General Banks; of Winchester, with bands playing “ Dixie,” 
with great white-topped wagons going endlessly through the 
streets, with soldiers passing and repassing, or drilling, drilling, drill- 
ing in the fields without, or thronging the Taylor House, or com- 
ing to supper in the hospitable brick mansions where the pretty 
girls could never, never, never look aught but kindly on any man 
who wore the grey — of Winchester, in short, in war time. 

The sun slipped low in the heavens. Out of the purple haze to the 
south, a wagon from Staunton way, drawn by oxen and piled high 


[= December afternoon was drawing to a quiet close. The 


WINCHESTER es a 


> 


with forage, came up a side street. The ancient-negro wae drove. ~: 


was singing, — 


‘“*T saw de beam in my sistah’s eye, 
Cyarn see de beam in mine! 
Yo ’d better lef’ yo’ sistah’s doah, 
An’ keep yo’ own doah fine! - 
An’I had er mighty battle lak Jacob an’ de angel —”’ 


The wagon passed on. A picket squad swung up the middle of the 
street, turned, and went marching toward the sunset. The corner 
house was a warehouse fitted for a hospital. Faces showed at the 
windows; when, for a moment, a sash was lifted, a racking cough 
made itself heard. Just now no wounded lodged in the warehouse, 
but all the diseases were there with which raw troops are scourged. 
There were measles and mumps, there were fevers, typhoid and 
malarial, there were intestinal troubles, there were pleurisy and 
pneumonia. Some of the illnesses were slight, and some of the men 
would be discharged by Death. The glow of the sun made the win- 
dow glass red. It was well, for the place needed every touch of cheer. 

The door opened, and two ladies came out, the younger with an 
empty basket. The oppression of the place they were leaving stayed 
with them for some distance down the wider street, but at last, in 
the rosy light, with a bugle sounding from the camp without the 
town, the spirits of the younger, at least, revived. She drew a long 
breath. “Well! As long as Will is in a more comfortable place, and 
is getting better, and Richard is well and strong, and they all say he 
is a born soldier and his men adore him, and there is n’t a battle, and 
if there were, we’d win, and this weather lasts, and a colonel and a 
captain and two privates are coming to supper, and one of them 
draws and the other has a voice like an angel, and my silk dress is 
almost as good as new, I can’t be terribly unhappy, mother!” 

Margaret Cleave laughed. “I don’t want you to be! I am not 
‘terribly’ unhappy myself — despite those poor, poor boys in the 
warehouse! I am thankful about Will and I am thankful about 
Richard, and war is war, and we must all stand it. We must stand 
it with just as high and exquisite a courage as we can muster. If we 
can add a gaiety that is n’t thoughtless, so much the better! We’ve 
got to do it for Virginia and for the South — yes, and for every soul 
who is dear to us, and for ourselves! I’ll lace your silk dress, and 








102 THE LONG ROLL 


I’) play Mr. Fairfax’s accompaniments with much pleasure — and 
to-morrow we’ll come back to the warehouse with a full basket! I 
wish the coffee was not getting so low.” 

A soldier, a staff officer equipped for the road, came rapidly up the 
brick sidewalk, overtook the two, and spoke their names, holding 
out his hand. “I was sure ’t was you! Nowadays one meets one’s 
world in no matter how unlikely a place! Not that Winchester is an 
unlikely place — dear and hospitable little town! Nor, perhaps, 
should I besurprised. I knew that Captain Cleave was in the Stone- 
wall Brigade.” He took the basket from Miriam and walked beside 
them. 

‘““My youngest son has been ill,” said Margaret. ‘He is in the 
2d. Kind friends took him home and cared for him, but Miriam and 
I were unhappy at Three Oaks. So we closed the house and came.”’ 

“Will always was a baby,” volunteered Miriam. “When the 
fever made him delirious and they thought he was going to die, he 
kept calling for mother, and sometimes he called for me. Now he’s 
better, and the sister of a man in his mess is reading ‘ Kenilworth’ 
aloud to him, and he’s spoiled to death! Richard always did spoil 
him en P 

Her mother smiled. ‘‘I don’t think he’s really spoiled; not, that 
is, by Richard. — When did you come to town, Major Stafford?” 

“Last night,’ answered Stafford. ‘From General Loring, near 
Monterey. I am the advance of the Army of the Northwest. We 
are ordered to join General Jackson, and ten days or so should see 
the troops in Winchester. What is going to happen then? Dear 
madam, I do not know!”’ 

Miriam chose to remain petulant. ‘‘General Jackson is the most 
dreadful martinet! He drills and drills and drills the poor men until 
they’re too tired to stand. He makes people get up at dawn in 
December, and he won’t let officers leave camp without a pass, and 
he has prayer meetings all the time! Ever so many people think he’s 
crazy!” 

“Miriam!” 

“But they do, mother! Of course, not Richard. Richard knows 
how to be a soldier. And Will — Will would be loyal to a piece of 
cement out of the Virginia Military Institute! And of course the 
Stonewall Brigade does n’t say it, nor the Rockbridge Artillery, nor 


WINCHESTER 103 


any of Ashby’s men — they’re soldiers, too! But I’ve heard the 
militia say it —” 

Maury Stafford laughed. ‘‘Then I won’t! I’ll only confide to you 
that the Army of the Northwest thinks that General Jackson is — 
is — well, is General Jackson! — To burn our stores of subsistence, 
to leave unguarded the passes along a hundred miles of mountain, to 
abandon quarters just established, to get our sick somehow to the 
rear, and to come up here upon some wild winter campaign or other 
—all on the representation of the rather singular Commander of 
the Army of the Valley!” He took off his gold-braided cap, and lifted 
his handsome head to the breeze from the west. “But what can 
you do with professors of military institutes and generals with one 
battle to their credit? Nothing — when they have managed to con- 
vert to their way of thinking both the commanding general and 
the government at Richmond! — You look grave, Mrs. Cleave! I 
should not have said that, I know. Pray forget it — and don’t 
believe that I am given to such indiscretions!”? He laughed. “There 
were representations which I was to make to General Jackson. Well, 
I made them! In point of fact, I made them but an hour ago. Hence 
this unbecoming temper. They were received quite in the manner of 
a stone wall — without comment and without removal from the 
ground occupied! Well! Why not expect the thing to show its 
nature ? — Is this pleasant old house your goal ?” 

They had come to a white, old mansion, with steps running up toa 
narrow yard and a small porch. “‘ Yes, we are staying here. Will you 
not come in?” . 

“Thank you, no. I ride as far as Woodstock to-night. I have 
not seen Captain Cleave. Indeed, I have not seen him since last 
spring.” 

“He is acting just now as aide to General Jackson. You have 
been all this while with General Magruder on the Peninsula ?”’ 

“Yes, until lately. We missed Manassas.”’ He stood beside the 
garden wall, his gauntleted hand on the gatepost. A creeper bear- 
ing yet a few leaves hung from a tree above, and one of the crimson 
points touched his grey cap. “I am now on General Loring’s staff. 
Where he goes at present I go. And where General Jackson goes, 
apparently we all go! Heigho! How do you like war, Miss Mir- 
iam?” 


104 THE LONG ROLL 


Miriam regarded him with her air of a brown and gold gilliflower. 
She thought him very handsome, and oh, she liked the gold-braided 
cap and the fine white gauntlet! “There is something to be said on 
both sides,”’ she stated sedately. “I should like it very much did not. 
you all run into danger.” 

Stafford looked at her, amused. ‘‘ But some of us run out again — 
Ah!” 

Cleave came from the house and down the path to the gate, mov- 
ing in a red sunset glow, beneath trees on which yet hung a few rus- 
set leaves. He greeted his mother and sister, then turned with cour- 
tesy to Stafford. “Sandy Pendleton told me you were in town. 
From General Loring, are you not? You low-countrymen are gather- 
ing all our mountain laurels! Gauley River and Greenbriar and 
to-day, news of the Allegheny engagement —”’ 

“You seem to be bent,” said Stafford, ‘‘on drawing us from the 
Monterey line before we can gather any more! We will be here next 
week.”’ 

“You do not like the idea ?”’ 

The other shrugged. “I? Why should I care? It is war to go 
where you are sent. But this weather is much too good to last, and I 
fail to see what can be done to the northward when winter is once 
let loose! And we leave the passes open. There is nothing to prevent 
Rosecrans from pushing a force through to Staunton!”’ 

“That is the best thing that could happen. Draw them into the 
middle valley and they are ours.” 

Stafford made a gesture. ‘‘Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame! Mrs. 
Cleave, there is no help for it! We are bewitched — and all by a 
stone wall in an old cadet cap!”’ 

Cleave laughed. “No, no! but it is, I think, apparent — You will 
not go in? I will walk with you, then, as far as the hotel.” 

Margaret Cleave held out her hand. “Good-bye, Major Stafford. 
We think day and night of all you soldiers. God bless you all, 
wherever you may be!” 

In the sunset light the two men turned their faces toward the 
Taylor House. ‘‘It is a good thing to have a mother,”’ said Stafford. 
“‘Mine died when I was a little boy. — Well, what do you think of 
affairs in general ?”’ 

“T think that last summer we won a Pyrrhic victory.” 


WINCHESTER 105 


“JT share your opinion. It was disastrous. How confident we are 
with our ‘One to Four,’ our ‘Quality, not Quantity,’ our contempt 
for ‘Brute Mass’! To listen to the newspapers one would suppose 
that the fighting animal was never bred north of the Potomac — 
Maryland, alone, an honourable exception! France and England, 
too! They’ll be our active allies not a minute later than April Fool’s 
Day!” 

“You are bitter.” 

“Tt is the case, is it not ?” 

“Yes,” said Cleave gravely. “And the blockade is daily growing 
more effective, and yet before we are closed in a ring of fire we do not 
get our cotton out nor our muskets in! Send the cotton to Europe 
and sell it and so fill the treasury with honest gold! — not with this 
delusion of wealth, these sheafs of Promises to Pay the Government 
is issuing. Five million bales of cotton idle in the South! With every 
nerve strained, with daring commensurate to the prize, we could get 
them out — even now! To-morrow it will be too late. The blockade 
will be complete, and we shall rest as isolated as the other side of the 
moon. Well! Few countries or men are wise till after the event.” 

“You are not bitter.” 

Cleave shook his head. ‘I do not believe in bitterness. And if the 
government is not altogether wise, so are few others. The people 
are heroic. We will see what we will see. I had a letter from the 
Peninsula the other day. Fauquier Cary is there with his legion. He 
says that McClellan will organize and organize and organize again 
until springtime. It’s what he does best. Then, if only he can 
be set going, he will bring into the field an army that is an army. 
And if he’s not thwarted by his own government he’ll try to 
reach Richmond from the correct direction — and that’s by sea 
to Old Point and up both banks of the James. All of which 
means heavy fighting on the Peninsula. So Cary thinks, and I 
dare say he knows his man. They were classmates and served to- 
gether in Mexico.” 

They approached the old colonnaded hotel. Stafford’s horse stood 
at the rack. A few soldiers were about the place and down the street, 
in the warm dusk a band was playing. “ You ride up the valley to- 
night ?” said Cleave. ‘“‘When you return to Winchester you must 
let me serve you in any way I can.” 


106 THE LONG ROLL 


“You are very good. How red the sunsets are! Look at that 
bough across the sky!” 

“Were you,” asked Cleave, “were you in Albemarle this autumn?” 

“Yes. For one day in October. The country looked its loveliest. 
The old ride through the woods, by the mill —”’ 

“T remember,” said Cleave. “My cousins were well ?”’ 

“Quite well. Enchanted princesses guarded by the sable Julius. 
The old place was all one drift of red and yellow leaves.” 

They reached the hotel. Cleave spoke abruptly. “I am to report 
presently at headquarters, so I will say good-bye here.”’ The two 
touched hands. “A pleasant gallop! You’ll have a moon and the 
road is good. If you see Randolph of Taliaferro’s, tell him to bring 
that book of mine he has.” 

He walked away, stalwart in the afterglow. Stafford watched 
him from the porch. ‘‘ Under other circumstances,”’ he thought, ‘“‘I 
might have liked you well enough. Now I do not care if you lead 
your mad general’s next mad charge.” 

The night fell, mild as milk, with a great white moon above the 
treetops. It made like mother-of-pearl the small grey house with 
pointed windows occupied, this December, by Stonewall Jackson. 
A clock in the hall was striking nine as Cleave lifted the knocker. 
An old negro came to the door. “‘Good-evening, Jim. Will you tell 
the general —”’ 

Some one spoke from down the hall. “Is that Captain Cleave? 
Come here, sir.”’ 

Passing an open door through which could be seen a clerk writing 
and an aide with his hands behind him studying an engraving of 
Washington crossing the Delaware, Cleave went on to the room 
whence the voice had issued. “‘Come in, and close the door,” it said 
again. 

The room was small, furnished with a Spartan simplicity, but 
with two good lamps and with a log of hickory burning on the 
hearth. A table held a number of outspread maps and three books — 
the Bible, a dictionary, and Napoleon’s “Maxims.” General Jack- 
son was seated on a small, rush-bottomed chair beside the table. By 
the window stood a soldier in nondescript grey attire, much the 
worse for mud and brambles. “Captain Cleave,”’ said the general, 
“were you ever on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal ?”’ 


WINCHESTER 107 


“No, sir.” 

“Do you know the stretch of the Potomac north of us ?” 

“T have ridden over the country between Harper’s Ferry and 
Bath.” 

“Do you know where is Dam No. 5?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Come nearer, Gold,” said the general. ‘Go on with your 
report.” 

“T counted thirty boats going up, general,” said Allan. “All 
empty. There’sa pretty constant stream of them just now. They’ll 
get the coal at Cumberland and turn back toward Washington in 
about ten days. It is estimated that a thousand tons a day will go 
down the canal — some of it for private use in Washington, but the 
greater part for the warships and the factories. The flatboats carry 
a large amount of forage. The Yankees are using them, too, to 
transport troops. There is no attempt to rebuild the section of the 
Baltimore and Ohio that we destroyed. They seem willing to depend 
upon the canal. But if Dam No. 5 were cut it would dry that canal 
like a bone for miles. The river men say that if any considerable 
breach were made it could not be mended this winter. As for the 
troops on the other side of the river —”’ He drew out a slip of paper 
and read from it: “‘Yankees upon the Maryland side of the 
Potomac from Point of Rocks to Hancock — say thirty-five hun- 
dred men. Two thirds of this force above Dam No. 4. At Williams- 
port Colonel Leonard with three regiments and several guns. At 
Four Locks a troop. At Dam No. 5 several companies of infantry 
encamped. At Hancock a considerable force — perhaps two regi- 
ments. A detachment at Clear Spring. Cavalry over against 
Sleepy Creek, Cherry Run, and Sir John’s Run. Concentration easy 
at any point up and down the river. A system of signals both for the 
other side and for any of their scouts who may have crossed to this. 
Troops reported below Point of Rocks and at the mouth of the 
Monocacy. The remainder of General Banks’s division — perhaps 
fifteen thousand men — in winter quarters at Frederick City.’ — 
That is all I have to report, general.”’ | 

“Very good,” said Jackson. “Give me your memorandum. Cap- 
tain Cleave —” 

pat wie 


108 THE -EONG: ROLL 


Stonewall Jackson rose from the rush-bottomed chair and walked 
with his slow stiff stride to the mantelpiece. From behind a china 
vase he took a saucer holding a lemon which had been cut in two, 
then, standing very rigidly before the fire, he slowly and medita- 
tively sucked the lemon. Cleave, beside the table, had a whimsical 
thought. The general, about to open slightly the door of reticence 
and impart information, was stimulating himself to the effort. He 
put the lemon down and returned to the table. ‘Captain Cleave, 
while I am waiting for General Loring, I propose to break this dam 
— Dam No. 5.” 

HY 6s.-Sir. 4 

“T shall go almost immediately to Martinsburg, taking with me 
General Garnett’s brigade and two of the Rockbridge guns. It will 
be necessary to cover the operation. The work may take several 
days. By the time the dam is broken General Loring will be up.” 

His eyes moved toward the mantel. Allan Gold stepped noise- 
lessly across the room and brought back the saucer with the lemon, 
setting it on the table. ‘Thank you,” said Jackson gently, and 
sucked the acid treasure. “With this reinforcement I am going 
against Kelly at Romney. If God gives us the victory there, I shall 
strike past Kelly at Rosecrans.”’ 

“T hope that He will give it, sir. That part of Virginia is worth 
making an effort for.” 

“That is my opinion, sir. While I march toward Romney the 
government at Washington may thrust General Banks across the 
Potomac. I do not want him in my rear, nor between me and Gen- 
eral Johnston.” He again sucked the lemon. ‘The Secretary of War 
writes that our spies report a clamour at Washington for some move- 
ment before spring. It is thought at Richmond that General Banks 
has been ordered to cross the Potomac as soon as practicable, effect- 
ing if possible a junction with Kelly and descending upon Winches- 
ter; General McClellan at the same time to advance against Gen- 
eral Johnston at Manassas. Maybe it is so, maybe not. Of one 
thing I am sure — General McClellan will not move until General 
Banks is on this side of the river. Yesterday Colonel Ashby cap- 
tured a courier of Kelly’s bearing a letter to Banks. The letter, 
which demands an answer, asks to know explicitly what are Banks’s 
instructions from Washington.”’ 


WINCHESTER 109 


He put the lemon down. “Captain Cleave, I very particularly 
wish to know what are General Banks’s instructions from Washing- 
ton. Were Jarrow here he would find out for me, but I have sent 
Jarrow on other business. I want to know within four days.” 

There was a moment’s stillness in the room; then, “Very well, 
sir,’ said Cleave. 

““T remember,” said Jackson, ‘“‘that you sent me the scout here. 
He does good service. He is at your disposal for the next few days.” 
Drawing ink and paper toward him, he wrote a few lines. ‘‘Go to 
the adjutant for anything you may need. Captain Cleave on Special 
Service. Here, too, is the name and address of a Catholic priest in 
Frederick City. He may be depended upon for some readiness of 
mind, and for good-will. That is all, I think. Good-night, captain. 
In four days, if you please. You will find me somewhere between 
Martinsburg and the river.” 

“You spoke, sir,’’ said Cleave, “of a captured dispatch from 
General Kelly. May I see it ?” 

Jackson took it from a box upon the table. “There it is.”’ 

“Do you object, sir, to its reaching General Banks ?” 

The other retook the paper, glanced over it, and gave it back. 
“No, not if it goes by a proper courier.”’ 

“‘Has the former courier been sent to Richmond ?” 

““Not yet.”’ He wrote another line. “This, if you wish to see the 
courier.” 

> that is dusit t: 

“That is all, captain. Within four days, near Martinsburg. 
Good-night.”’ 

The two soldiers saluted and left the room, going softly through 
the hall, past the door where the aide was now studying the Cap- 
ture of André and out into the moonlight. They walked down the 
long board path to the gate, unlatched this, and turned their faces 
toward the camp. For some distance they were as silent as the 
street before them; then, “If ever you had taught school,” said 
Allan, “you would know how headings out of reading books and 
sentences that you set for the children to copy have a way of starting 
up before you at every corner. The Post of Honour is the Post of 
Danger. I can see that in round hand. But what I can’t see is how 
you are going to do it.” 


110 THE LONG ROLL 


“T want,” said the other, “one half-hour quite to myself. Then I 
think I’ll know. Here’s the picket. The word’s Bethel.” 

The Stonewall Brigade was encamped in the fields just without 
the town. It was early in the war and there were yet tents — long 
line of canvas “‘A’s”’ stretching in the moonlight far over the rolling 
ground. Where the tents failed there had been erected tiny cabins, 
very rude, with abundant ventilation and the strangest chimneys. 
A few field officers were quartered in the town and Jackson had with 
him there his permanent staff. But captains and lieutenants stayed 
with the men. The general of them all ruled with a rod of iron. For 
the most part it swayed lightly, with a certain moral effect only over 
the head of the rank and file, but it grew to a crushing beam for the 
officer who did not with alacrity habitually attend to his every duty, 
great or small. The do-nothing, the popinjay, the intractable, the 
self-important, the remonstrant, the thought, sir — the It is due to 
my dignity, sir — none of these flourished in the Army of the Val- 
ley. The tendencies had been there, of course; they came up like the 
flowers of spring, but each poor bloom as it appeared met an icy 
blast. The root beneath learned to send up to the sky a sturdier 
growth. 

Company A, 65th Virginia, numbered in its ranks men who knew 
all about log cabins. It was well lodged, and the captain’s hut did 
it credit. Richard Cleave and Allan, entering, found a fire, and 
Tullius nodding beside it. At their step he roused himself, rose, and 
put on another log. He was a negro of sixty years, tall and hale, a 
dignified master of foraging, a being simple and taciturn and strong, 
with a love for every clod of earth at Three Oaks where he had been 
born. 

Cleave spoke. “Where is Lieutenant Breckinridge, Tullius ?”’ 

Tullius straightened himself. “Lieutenant Breckinridge is at the 
colonel’s, sah. An’ Lieutenant Coffin, he’s at the Debatin’ Society in 
Company C.” 

Cleave sat down before the pine table. “Give Allan Gold some- 
thing to eat, and don’t either of you speak to me for twenty 
minutes.”’ He propped his head on his hands and stared at the 
boards. Allan seated himself on a box beside the fire. Tullius 
took from a flat, heated stone a battered tin coffee-pot, poured into 
an earthenware cup some smoking mixture, and brought it to the 


WINCHESTER III 


scout. ‘Hit ain’t moh’n half chicory, sah.” From an impromptu 
cupboard he brought a plate of small round cakes. ‘“ Mis’ Miriam, 
she done mek ’em fer us.”’ 

Cleave spoke from the table. His voice was dreamy, his eyes 
fixed upon the surface before him as though he were studying ocean 
depths. “Tullius, give me a dozen coffee berries.”’ 

“Er cup of coffee, you mean, Marse Dick ?”’ 

““No, coffee berries. Have n’t you any there ?” 

Tullius brought a small tin box, tilted it, and poured on the table 
something like the required number. “Thar’s all thar is.” He 
returned to his corner of the fire, and it purred and flamed upon 
the crazy hearth between him and the scout. The latter, his rifle 
across his knees, now watched the flames, now the man at the table. 
Cleave had strung the coffee berries along a crack between the 
boards. Now he advanced one small brown object, now retired an- 
other, now crossed them from one side to the other. Following these 
manceuvres, he sat with his chin upon his hand for five minutes, then 
began to make a circle with the berries. He worked slowly, drop- 
ping point after point in place. The two ends met. He rose from the 
table. “That’s all right. I am going to brigade headquarters for 
a little, Allan. Suppose you come along. There are some things I 
want to know — those signals, for instance.’’ He took up his hat 
and sword. “Tullius, you’ll have Dundee saddled at four o’clock. 
I’ll see Lieutenant Breckinridge and the colonel. I won’t be back 
until after taps. Cover the fire, but wait up for me.” 

He and Allan went out together. Tullius restored the coffee ber- 
ries to the tin box, and the box to the cupboard, sat down by the 
fire, and fell again into a nodding dream of Three Oaks, of the gar- 
den, and of his grandchildren in the quarter. 


CHAPTER: X 


LIEUTENANT MCNEILL 


from the Maryland to the Virginia side. The clear, deep 

water lay faintly blue beneath the winter sky, and the woods 
came so close that long branches of sycamore swept the flood. In 
that mild season every leaf had not fallen; up and down the river 
here the dull red of an oak met the eye, and there the faded gold of 
a willow. 

The flatboat, a brown shadow beneath a creaking wire and 
pulley, came slowly to the southern side of the stream. The craft, 
squat to the water and railed on either side, was in the charge of an 
old negro. Clustered in the middle of the boat appeared a tall Mary- 
lander in blue jeans, two soldiers in blue cloth, and a small darky in 
a shirt of blue gingham. All these stared at a few yards of Virginia 
road, shelving, and overarched by an oak that was yet touched with 
maroon, and stared at a horseman in high boots, a blue army over- 
coat, and a blue and gold cap, who, mounted upon a great bay horse, 
was waiting at the water’s edge. The boat crept into the shadow of 
the trees. 

One of the blue soldiers stood watchfully, his hands upon an 
Enfield rifle. The other, a middle-aged, weather-beaten sergeant- 
major who had been leaning against the rail, straightened himself 
and spoke, being now within a few feet of the man on horseback. 

“Your signal was all right,” he said. ‘And your coat’s all right. 
But how did your coat get on this side of the river ?”’ 

“Tt’s been on this side for some time,” explained the man on 
horseback, with a smile. ‘‘ Ever since Uncle Sam presented it to me 
at Wheeling — and that was before Bull Run.’”’ He addressed the 
negro. ‘‘Is this the fastest this boat can travel? I’ve been waiting 
here half an hour.” 

The sergeant-major persisted. “Your coat’s all right, and your 
signal’s all right, and if it hadn’t ha’ been, our sharpshooters 


[Ts Williamsport ferry-boat came slowly across the Potomac, 


LIEUTENANT McNEILL 113 


would n’t ha’ left much of you by now — Your coat’s all right, and 
your signal’s all right, but I’m damned if your voice ain’t South- 
ern —”’ The head of the boat touched the shore and the dress of 
the horseman was seen more closely. — “Lieutenant,” ended the 
speaker, with a change of tone. 

The rider, dismounting, led his horse down the yard or two of 
road and into the boat. “So, Dandy! Just think it’s the South 
Branch, and come on! Thirty miles since breakfast, and still so 
gaily!” 

Horse and man entered the boat, which moved out into the 
stream. 

“T wasonce,”’ stated the sergeant-major, though still in the proper 
tone of respect toward a lieutenant, “I was once in Virginia for a 
month, down on the Pamunkey — and the people all said ‘gaily.’ ” 

“They say it still,”’ answered the rider. ‘‘ Not so much, though, in 
my part of Virginia. It’s Tuckahoe, not Cohee. I’m from the val- 
ley of the South Branch, between Romney and Moorefield.” 

The heretofore silent blue soldier shifted his rifle. “What in 
hell —” he muttered. The sergeant-major looked at the Virginia 
shore, looked at the stranger, standing with his arm around his 
horse’s neck, and looked at the Williamsport landing, and the can- 
non frowning from Doubleday’s Hill. In the back of his head there 
formed a little picture —a drumhead court-martial, a provost 
guard, a tree and arope. Then came the hand of reason, and wiped 
the picture away. “‘ Pshaw! spies don’t say they’re Southern. And, by 
jiminy! one might smile with his lips, but he could n’t smile with his 
eyes like that. And he’s lieutenant, and there’s such a thing, Tom 
Miller, as being too smart! —’’ He leaned upon the rail, and, being 
an observant fellow, he looked to see if the lieutenant’s hand trem- 
bled at all where it lay upon the horse’s neck. It did not; it rested 
as quiet as an empty glove. The tall Marylander began to speak 
with a slow volubility. ‘There was a man from the Great Kanawha 
to Williamsport ’t other day — a storekeeper — a big, fat man with 
a beard like Abraham’s in the ’lustrated Bible. I heard him 
a-talking to the colonel. ‘All the Union men in northwestern 
Virginia are on the Ohio side of the mountains,’ said he. ‘Toward 
the Ohio we’re all for the Union,’ said he. ‘There’s more Northern 
blood than Southern in that section, anyway,’ said he. ‘But all this 


114 THE LONG ROLL 


side of the Alleghenies is different, and as for the Valley of the South 
Branch — the Valley of the South Branch is a hotbed of rebels.’ 
That’s what he said — ‘a hotbed of rebels.’ ‘As for the mountain 
folk in between,’ he says, ‘they hunt with guns, and the men in the 
valley hunt with dogs, and there ain’t any love lost between them at 
the best of times. Then, too, it’s the feud that settles it. If a moun- 
tain man’s hereditary enemy names his baby Jefferson Davis, then 
the first man, he names his Abraham Lincoln, and shoots at the other 
man from behind a bush. And vice versa. So it goes. But the valley 
of the South Branch is old stock,’ he says, ‘and a hotbed of rebels.’”’ 

“When it’s taken by and large, that is true,” said the horseman 
with coolness. ‘‘ But there are exceptions to all rules, and there are 
some Union men along the South Branch.” He stroked his horse’s 
neck. “So, Dandy! Are n’t there exceptions to all rules?” 

“He’s a plumb beauty, that horse,” remarked the sergeant- 
major. “I don’t ride much myself, but if I had a horse like that, and 
a straight road, and weather like this, I would n’t ask any odds 
between here and Milikenville, Illinois! I guess he’s a jim dandy to 
travel, Lieutenant —”’ 

“McNeill,” said the Virginian. “It is lovely weather. You don’t 
often have a December like this in your part of the world.”’ 

“No, we don’t. And I only hope ’t will last.” 

“T hope it will,” assented McNeill. “It’s bad marching in bad 
weather.”’ 

“T don’t guess,” said the sergeant-major, “‘that we’ll do much 
marching before springtime.” 

“No, I reckon not,” answered the man from the South Branch. 
“T came from Romney yesterday. General Kelly is letting the men 
build cabins there. That does n’t look like moving.” 

““We’re doing the same here,” said the sergeant-major, “‘and they 
say that the army’s just as cosy at Frederick as a bug inarug. Yes, 
sir; it’s in the air that we’ll give the rebels rope till springtime.”’ 

The ferry-boat touched the northern bank. Here were a little, 
rocky shore, an expanse of swampy ground, a towpath, a canal, a 
road cut between two hills, and in the background a village with one 
or two church spires. The two hills were white with tents, and upon 
the brow cannon were planted to rake the river. Here and there, 
between the river and the hills, were knots of blue soldiers. A freight 


LIEUTENANT McNEILL 115 


boat loaded with hay passed snail-like down the canal. It was a 
splendid early afternoon, cool, still, and bright. The tall Mary- 
lander and the three blue soldiers left the boat, the man from 
Romney leading his horse. “‘Where’s headquarters?’ he demanded. 
“T’ll go report, and then get something to eat for both Dandy and 
myself. We’ve got to make Frederick City to-night.” 

“The large wall tents over there on the hill,” directed the ser- 
geant-major. “It’s a long way to Frederick, but Lord! with that 
horse —”’ He hesitated for a moment, then spoke up in a courageous, 
middle-aged, weather-beaten fashion, ‘‘I hope you’ll have a plea- 
sant ride, lieutenant! I guess I was a little stiffer’n good manners 
calls for, just at first. You see there’s been so much talk of — of — 
of masquerading — and your voice is Southern, if your politics ain’t! 
’T is n’t my usual way.” 

Lieutenant McNeill smiled. “I am sure of that, sergeant! As 
you say, there has been a deal of masquerading, and this side of 
the river naturally looks askance at the other. But you see, Gen- 
eral Kelly zs over there, and he happens, just now, to want to com- 
municate with General Banks.’ His smile grew broader. “It’s 
perfectly natural, but it’s right hard on the man acting courier! 
Lord knows I had trouble enough running Ashby’s gauntlet with- 
out being fired on from this side!” 

“That’s so! that’s so!’’ answered the sergeant cordially. “Well, 
good luck to you getting back! You may find some friends here. 
We’ve a company or two of Virginians from the Ohio.” 

General Kelly’s messenger proceeded to climb the hill to the wall 
tents indicated. There was a short delay, then he found himself in 
the presence of the colonel commanding at Williamsport. “From 
General Kelly at Romney? How did you get here?” 

“T left Romney, sir, yesterday morning, and I came by bridle 
paths through the mountains. I was sent because I have hunted 
over every mile of that country, and I could keep out of Ashby’s 
way. I struck the river above Bath, and I worked down through 
the woods to the ferry. I have a letter for General Banks.” 

Drawing out a wallet, he opened it and handed to the other the 
missive in question. “If I was chased I was to destroy it before cap- 
ture,” he said. “The slip with it is a line General Kelly gave me.” 

The colonel commanding at Williamsport glanced at the latter 


116 THE LONG ROLL 


document. ‘‘A native of the South Branch valley,” he said crisply. 
“That’s a disaffected region.”’ 

“Yes, sir. It is. But there are one or two loyal families.” 

“You wish to go on to Frederick this afternoon?”’ 

“Yes, sir. As soon as my horse is a little rested. My orders are 
to use all dispatch back to Romney with General Banks’s answer.”’ 

The colonel, seated at a table, weighed General Kelly’s letter in 
his hand, looked at the superscription, turned it over, and studied 
the seal. ‘Do the rebels on the other side show any signs of com- 
ing activity? Our secret service men have not been very success- 
ful — they make statements that it is hard to credit. I should be 
glad of any reliable information. What did you see or hear coming 
through ?” 

The lieutenant studied the floor a moment, shrugged, and spoke 
out. ‘“Ashby’s active enough, sir. Since yesterday I have just 
grazed three picket posts. He has vedettes everywhere. The report 
is that he has fifteen hundred troopers — nearly all valley men, 
born to the saddle and knowing every crook and cranny of the land. 
They move like a whirlwind and deal in surprises — 


The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold — 


Only these cohorts are grey, not purple and gold. That’s Ashby. 
On the other hand, Jackson at Winchester need not, perhaps, be 
taken into account. The general impression is that he’ll stay where 
he is until spring. I managed to extract some information from a 
mountain man above Sleepy Creek. Jackson is drilling his men from 
daylight until dark. It is said that he is crazy on the subject — on 
most subjects, in fact; that he thinks himself a Cromwell, and is 
bent upon turning his troops into Ironsides. Of course, should 
General Banks make any movement to cross — preparatory, say, 
to joining with General Kelly — Jackson might swing out of Win- 
chester and give him check. Otherwise, he’ll probably keep on 
drilling —”’ 

“The winter’s too far advanced,” sa‘d the colonel, “for any such 
movement upon our part. As soon as it is spring we’ll go over there 
and trample out this rebellion.” He weighed Kelly’s letter once 
more in his hand, then restored it to the bearer. ‘It’s all right, 
Lieutenant McNeill. I’ll pass you through. — You read Byron?” 


LIEUTENANT McNEILL 8 


“Yes,” said Lieutenant McNeill briefly. ‘“He’s a great poet. 
‘Don Juan,’ now, and Suvaroff at Ismail — 


He made no answer, but he took the city. 


The bivouac, too, in Mazeppa.” He restored General Kelly’s 
’ letter and the accompanying slip to his wallet. ‘“‘Thank you, sir. If 
I am to make Frederick before bedtime I had better be going —”’ 

‘“‘ An aide of General Banks,’’ remarked the colonel, ‘‘is here, and 
is returning to Frederick this afternoon. He is an Englishman, I 
believe, of birth. You might ride together — Very opportunely; here 
he is!”’ 

A tall, blond being, cap-a-pie for the road, had loomed in dark 
blue before the tent door. “Captain Marchmont,” said the colonel, 
“let me make you acquainted with Lieutenant McNeill, a Joyal Vir- 
ginian bearing a letter from General Kelly to General Banks —a 
gentleman with a taste, too, for your great poet Byron. As you are 
both riding to Frederick, you may find it pleasant to ride in com- 
pany.” 

“T must ride rapidly,” said McNeill, “but if Captain March- 
mone 

“T always ride rapidly,” answered the captain. “Learned it in 
Texas in 1843. At your service, lieutenant, whenever you’re ready.” 

The road to Frederick lay clear over hill and dale, past forest and 
stream, through a gap in the mountain, by mill and barn and farm- 
house, straight through a number of miles of crystal afternoon. Out 
of Williamsport conversation began. ‘‘When you want a purchaser 
for that horse, I’m your man,” said the aide. “By any chance, do 
you want to sell?” 

McNeill laughed. “Not to-day, captain!’’ He stroked the brown 
shoulder. “‘ Not to-day, Dun — Dandy!” 

““What’s his name? Dundandy?”’ 

“No,” replied the lieutenant. ‘Just Dandy. I’m rather fond of 
him. I think we'll see it out together.” 

“Yes, they are n’t bad comrades,” said the other amicably. “‘In 
’53, when I was with Lopez in Cuba, I had a little black mare that 
was just as well worth dying for as a woman or a man or most 
causes, but, damn me! she died for me — carried me past a murder- 
ous ambuscade, got a bullet for her pains, and never dropped until 


118 THE LONG ROLL 


she reached our camp!” He coughed. “What pleasant weather! 
Was it difficult getting through Jackson’s lines?” 

- Ves-ratner.”” 

They rode for a time in silence between fields of dead aster and 
goldenrod. “When I was in Italy with Garibaldi,” said Captain 
Marchmont thoughtfully, “I saw something of kinsmen divided in - 
war. It looked a very unnatural thing. You’re a Virginian, now?” 

“Yes, I am a Virginian.” 

“And you are fighting against Virginia. Curious!” 

The other smiled. ‘To be where you are you must believe in the 
inviolability of the Union.” 

“Oh, I?” answered Marchmont coolly. “I pee in it, of course. 
Iam fighting for it. It chanced, you see, that I was in France — and 
out of service and damnably out at elbows, too! — when Europe 
heard of Bull Run. I took passage at once in a merchant ship from 
Havre. It was my understanding that she was bound for New 
Orleans, but instead she put into Boston Harbour. I had no marked 
preference, fighting being fighting under whatever banner it 
occurs, so the next day I offered my sword to the Governor of 
Massachusetts. North and South, they’re none of mine. But were I 
in England — where I have n’t been of late years — and a row 
turned up, I should fight with England.” 

“No doubt,” answered the other. “‘ Your mind travels along the 
broad and simple lines of the matter. But with us there are many 
subtle and intricate considerations.” 

Passing now through woods they started a covey of partridges. 
The small brown and white shapes vanished in a skurry of dead 
leaves. ‘‘No doubt, no doubt!” said the soldier of fortune. “At 
any rate, I have rubbed off particularity in such matters. Live and 
let live — and each man to run the great race according to his inner 
vision! If he really conflicts with me, I’ll let him know it.” 

They rode on, now talking, now silent. To either side, beyond 
stone walls, the fields ran bare and brown to distant woods. The 
shadow of the wayside trees grew longer and the air more deep and 
cold. They passed a string of white-covered wagons bearing forage 
for the army. The sun touched the western hills, rimming them as 
with a forest fire. The horsemen entered a defile between the hills, 
travelled through twilight for a while, then emerged upon a world 


LIEUTENANT McNEILL 11g 


still softly lighted. “In the country at home,” said the Englishman, 
“the waits are practicing Christmas carols.” 

“T wish,” answered the Virginian, “that we had kept that old 
custom. I should like once to hear English carols sung beneath the 
windows on a snowy night.” As he rode he began to sing aloud, 
in a voice not remarkable, but good enough to give pleasure — 

“As Joseph was a-walking, 
He heard an angel sing, 

‘This night shall be born 
Our Heavenly King —’” 

‘Ves, I remember that one quite well,” said Captain Marchmont, 
and proceeded to sing in an excellent bass, — 

“He neither shall be born 
In housen nor in hall, 


Nor in the place of Paradise, 
But in an ox’s stall — 


“Do you know the next verse?” 
““Yes,”’ said McNeill. 
“He neither shall be clothed 
In purple nor in pall, 
But all in fair linen 
As are babies all!” 


“That’s it,” nodded the other. “And the next goes, — 


“He neither shall be rocked 
In silver nor in gold 
But in a wooden cradle 
That rocks on the mould —” 

Alternately they sang the carol through. The sun went down, but 
the pink stayed in the sky and was mirrored in a tranquil stream 
which they crossed. It faded at last into the quiet dusk. A cricket 
chirped from a field of dried Michaelmas daisies. They overtook and 
passed an infantry regiment, coming up, an officer told them, from 
Harper’s Ferry. The night fell, cold and still, with many stars. ““We 
are not far from Frederick,’ said Marchmont. ‘‘ You were never 
here before?”’ 

ia No: 

“T’ll take you at once to General Banks. You go back to Kelly 
at Romney to-morrow.” 


120 THE LONG ROLL 


‘Just as soon as General Banks shall have answered General 
Kelly’s letter.” 

“You have an occasional fight over there?’’ 

“Yes, up and down the line. Ashby’s command is rather active.” 

“By George! I wish I were returning with you! When you’ve re- 
ported I’ll look after youif you’ll allow me. Pleasant enough mess. 
— Major Hertz, whom I knew in Prussia, Captain Wingate of your 
old army and one or two others.” 

“I’m exceedingly obliged,”’ said McNeill, ‘but I have ridden hard 
of late, and slept little, and I should prove dull company. More- 
over there’s a good priest in Frederick who is a friend of a friend of 
mine. I have a message for him, and if General Banks permits, I 
shall sleep soundly and quietly at his house to-night.” 

“Very good,” said Marchmont. ‘“‘ You’ll get a better night there, 
though I’m sorry not to have you with us.— There are the lights 
of Frederick, and here’s the picket. You have your pass from 
Williamsport ?” 

McNeill gave it to a blue soldier, who called a corporal, who read 
it by a swinging lantern. ‘Very good. Pass, Lieutenant McNeill.” 

The two rode on. To left and right were lighted streets of tents, 
varied here and there by substantial cabins. Commissary quarters 
appeared, sutlers’ shops, booths, places of entertainment, guard- 
houses, a chapel. Soldiers were everywhere, dimly seen within the 
tents where the door flap was fastened back, plain to view about the 
camp-fires in open places, clustering like bees in the small squares 
from which ran the camp streets, thronging the trodden places 
before the sutlers, everywhere apparent in the foreground and 
divined in the distance. From somewhere came the strains of 
“Yankee Doodle.” A gust of wind blew out the folds of the stars 
and stripes, fastened above some regimental headquarters. The 
city of tents and of frame structures hasty and crude, of fires in 
open places, of sutlers’ shops and cantines, and booths of strolling 
players, of chapels and hospitals, of fluttering flags and wandering 
music, of restless blue soldiers, oscillating like motes in some search- 
light of the giants, persisted for along distance. At last it died away; 
there came a quiet field or two, then the old Maryland town of 
Frederick. 


SHARPER cl 


‘“AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING”’ 


an Englishman, a Prussian, a New Yorker, and a man from 

somewhere west of the Mississippi playing poker. ‘‘ General 
Banks would like to speak to Captain Marchmont for a moment, 
oil sie 

The aide laid down his cards, and adjusted his plumage before a 
long mirror. “Lieber Gott!” said Major Hertz, “I wish our general 
would go sleep and leafe us play the game.”’ 

Captain Marchmont, proceeding to a handsomely furnished 
apartment, knocked, entered, saluted, and was greeted by a general 
in a disturbed frame of mind. ‘Look here, captain, you rode from 
Williamsport with that fellow of Kelly’s. Did you notice anything 
out of the usual ?” 

The aide deliberated. ‘‘He had a splendid horse, sir. And the 
man himself seemed rather a mettled personage. If that’s out of the 
usual, I noticed that.’’ 

“Oh, of course he’s all right!” said the general. ‘“‘Kelly’s letter 
is perfectly bona fide, and so I make no doubt are McNeill’s passport 
and paper of instructions. I gave the letter back or I’d show you 
the signatures. It’s only that I got to thinking, awhile ago, after 
he’d gone.’”’ He took a turn across the roses upon the carpet. “A 
man that’s been in politics knows there are so many dodges. Our 
spies say that General Jackson is very acute. I got to thinking —”’ 
He came back to the red-covered table. “Did you talk of the 
military situation coming along ?” 

“Very little, sir.” 

“He was n’t inquisitive? Did n’t criticise, or draw you on to talk 
— did n’t ask about my troops and my movements?”’ 

He did not, sir.” 

The general sighed. ‘“‘It’sall right, of course. You see, he seemed 
an intelligent man, and we got to talking. I wrote my answer 


s T eleven that night by the Frederick clocks an orderly found 


122 THE LONG ROLL 


to General Kelly. He has it now, is to start to Romney with it at 
dawn. Then I asked some questions, and we got to talking. It’s 
all straight, of course, but on looking back I find that I said some 
things. He seemed an intelligent man, and in his general’s confi- 
dence. Well, I dismissed him at last, and he saluted and went off 
to get some rest before starting. And then, somehow, I got to 
thinking.. I have never been South, and all these places are only 
names to me, but —”’ He unrolled upon the table a map of large 
dimensions. “Look here a moment, captain! This is a map the 
department furnishes us. It’s black, you see, for the utterly dis- 
loyal sections, shaded for the doubtful, and white where there are 
Unionists. All Virginia ’s black except this northwest section, and 
that’s largely shaded.” 

“What,” asked Marchmont, “is this long black patch in the 
midst of the shading?” 

‘““That’s the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac — see, 
it’s marked! Now, this man’s from that locality.” 

“H—m! Dark as Erebus, apparently, along the South Branch!”’ 

“Just so.” General Banks paced again the roses. ‘‘Pshaw! It’s all 
right. I never saw a straighter looking fellow. I just thought I 
would ask you the nature of his talk along the road —”’ 

“Tt was hardly of military matters, sir. But if you wish to detain 
him eee, 

“‘General Kelly must have my letter. I’m not to move, and it’s 
important that he should know it.” 

“Why not question him again?” 

The general came back to the big chair beside the table. “I have 
no doubt he’s as honest as Iam.” He looked at the clock. “After 
midnight! — and I’ve been reviewing troops all day. Do you think 
it’s worth while, captain?” | 

“Tn war very little things are worth while, sir.” 

“But you were with him all afternoon, and he seemed perfectly 
all right —” 

“Yes, sir, I liked him very well.” He pulled at his long yellow 
moustache. “There was only one little circumstance. . . . If you 
are doubtful, sir — The papers, of course, might be forged.” 

The late Governor of Massachusetts rested irresolute. ‘Except 
that he was born in Virginia there is n’t a reason for suspecting him. 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING 123 


And it’s our policy to conciliate all this shaded corner up here.” 
The clock struck the half-hour. General Banks looked longingly 
toward his bedroom. “I’ve been through the mill to-day. It’s 
pretty hard on a man, this working over time. — Where’s he 
lodging?” 

“McNeill, sir? He said he would find quarters with some connec- 
tion or other — a Catholic priest —”’ 

“A Catholic— There again!” The general looked perturbed. 
Rising, he took from a desk two or three pages of blue official pa- 
per, covered with writing. “I got that from Washington to-day, 
from the Secret Service Department. Read it.” 

Captain Marchmont read: “‘Distrust without exception the 
Catholic priests in Frederick City. There is reason to believe that 
the Catholics throughout Maryland are Secessionists. Distrust all 
Maryland, in fact. The Jesuits have a house at Frederick City. 
They are suspected of furnishing information. Keep them under 
such surveillance as your judgment shall indicate.’ — Humph!”’ 

General Banks sighed, poured out something from a decanter, and 
drank it. “I guess, captain, you had better go and bring that man 
from the South Branch back here. Take a few men and do it 
quietly. He seems a gentleman, and there may be absolutely no- 
thing wrong. Tell him I’ve something to add to General Kelly’s 
letter. Here’s a list of the priests in Frederick. Father Tierney 
seems the most looked up to, and I gave him a subscription yester- 
day for his orphan asylum.” 

Half an hour later Marchmont and two men found themselves 
before a small, square stone house, standing apart from its neigh- 
bours in a small, square yard. From without the moonbeams 
flooded it, from within came no pinpoint of light. It was past the 
middle of the night, and almost all the town lay still and dark. 
Marchmont lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. The sound, deep 
and reverberant, should have reached every ear within, however 
inattentive. He waited, but there came no answering footfall. He 
knocked again —no light nor sound; again — only interstellar 
quiet. He shook the door. “‘Go around to the back, Roberts, and 
see if you can get in.” Roberts departed. Marchmont picked 
up some pieces of gravel from the path and threw them against 
the window panes, to no effect. Roberts came back. “That’s an 


124 THE LONG ROLL 


awful heavy door, sir, heavier than this. And the windows are 
high up.” 

“Very good,” said the captain. “This one looks stronger than it 
really is. Stand back, you two.”’ 

He put his shoulder to the door — “Wait a minute, sir! Some- 
body’s lit a candle upstairs.”’ 

The candle passed leisurely from window to window, was lost for 
a minute, and then, through a small fan-light above the door, was 
observed descending the stairs. A bolt creaked, then another. The 
door opened, and Father Tierney, hastily gowned and blinking, 
stood before the invaders. He shaded his candle with his hand, and 
the light struck back, showing a strong and rosy and likable face. 
“Faith!” he said, ‘‘an’ I thought I was after hearin’ a noise. Good- 
evenin’ gentlemen — — a rather good- “morning, for it must be toward 
poe. What — 

“Tt’s not so late as nue interrupted Marchmont. “I wish I had 
your recipe for sleeping, father. It would be invaluable when a man 
did n’t want to be waked up. However, my business is not with you, 
Dut” 

“Holy powers!” said Father Tierney, ‘‘did ye not know that I 
live here by myself? Father Lavalle is at the other end of town, and 
Father O’Hara lives by the Noviciate. Sure, and any one could have 
told you —”’ 

“Father Lavalle and Father O’Hara,” said the aide, “are nothing 
to the question. You have a guest with you —”’ 

Father Tierney looked enlightened. ‘“‘Oh! Avcoorse! There’s 
always business on hand between soldiers. Was it Lieutenant 
McNeill you’ll be looking after?” 

Marchmont nodded. ‘There are some instructions that General 
Banks neglected to give him. It is late, but the general wishes to 
get it all straight before he sleeps. I am sorry to disturb Lieutenant 
McNeill, for he must be fatigued. But orders are orders, you 
know —”’ 

‘‘ Av coorse, av coorse!”’ agreed Father Tierney. ‘“‘‘A man having 
authority,’ ‘I say unto this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, 
Come, and he cometh —’ ” 

“So, father, if you’ll be good enough to explain to Lieutenant 
McNeill — or if you’ll tell me which is his room —”’ 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING | 125 


The light of the candle showed a faint trouble in Father Tierney’s 
face. ‘Sure, it’s too bad! Do you think, my son, the matter is of 
importance? ’T would be after being just a little left-over of direc- 
tions ?” 

‘Perhaps,’ said Marchmont. “ But orders are orders, father, and 
I must awaken Lieutenant McNeill. Indeed, it’s hard to think that 
he’s asleep —” 

“He is n’t aslape.”’ 

“Then will you be so good as to tell him —”’ 

“Indeed, and I wish I could do that same thing, my son, but it 
is n’t in nature —”’ 

General Banks’s aide made a gesture of impatience. “I can’t 
dawdle here any longer! Either you or I, father.”” He pushed into 
the hall. ‘Where is his room?”’ 

“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Father Tierney. “It’s vexed he’ll be 
when he learns that the general was n’t done with him! There’s the 
room, captain darlint, but —”’ 

Marchmont’s eyes followed the pointing of the candlestick. 
“There!” he exclaimed. The door was immediately upon the left, 
not five feet from the portal he had lately belaboured. “Then 
’t was against his window that I flung the gravel!” 

With an oath he crossed the hall and struck his hand against the 
panel indicated. No answer. He knocked again with peremptori- 
ness, then tried the door. It was unlocked, and opened quietly to his 
touch. All beyond was silent and dark. “‘ Father Tierney, I’ll thank 
you for that candle!” The priest gave it, and the aide held it up, 
displaying a chill and vacant chamber, furnished with monastic 
spareness. There was a narrow couch that had been slept in. March- 
mont crossed the bare floor, bent, and felt the bedclothing. “Quite 
cold. You’ve been gone some time, my friend. H—m! things look 
rather black for you!” 

Father Tierney spoke from the middle of the room. “It’s sorry 
the lieutenant will be! Sure, and he thought he had the general’s. 
last word! ‘Slape until you wake, my son,’ says I. ‘Judy will give 
us breakfast at eight.’ ‘No, no, father,’ says he. ‘General Kelly is 
wearying for this letter from General Banks. If I get it through 
prompt it will be remembered for me,’ he says. ‘’T will be a point 
toward promotion,’ he says. ‘My horse has had a couple of hours’ 


126 THE LONG ROLL 


rest, and he’s a Trojan beside,’ he says. ‘I’ll sleep an hour myself, 
and then I’ll be taking the road back to Romney. Ashby’s over on 
the other side,’ he says, ‘and the sooner I get Ashby off my mind, 
the better pleased I’ll be,’ he says. And thereupon he slept for 
an hour —”’ 

Marchmont still regarded the bed. “I’ll be damned if I know, my 
friend, whether you’re blue or grey! How long has he been gone?”’ 

Father Tierney pondered the question. “By the seven holy 
candles, my son, I was that deep asleep when you knocked that I 
don’t rightly know the time of night! Maybe he has been gone an 
hour, maybe more —”’ 

“And how did he know the countersign?”’ 

“Faith, and I understood that the general himself gave him the 
word —”’ 

“F{—m!”’ said Marchmont, and tugged at his moustache. He 
stood in silence for a moment, then turned sharply. ‘Blue or grey, 
which? I’ll be damned if I don’t find out! Your horse may be a 
Trojan, my friend, but by this time he’s a tired Trojan! Roberts!” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“You two go at once to headquarters’ stables. Saddle my horse 
— not the black I rode yesterday — the fresh one, Caliph. Get your 
own horses. Double-quick now! Ten minutes is all I give you.” 

The men departed. Marchmont stalked out of the chamber and 
to the open front door. Father Tierney, repossessed of the candle, 
followed him. “Sure, and the night’s amazing chill! By good luck, 
I’ve a fine old bottle or two — one of the brigadiers, that’s a good 
son of the church, having sent me a present. Whist, captain! a 
little glass to cheer the heart av ye —”’ 

“T’ll not stop now, father,” said the aide dryly. “‘ Perhaps, upon 
my return to Frederick I may call upon you.” 

“Do so, do so, my son,” said Father Tierney. “And ye’re going 
to overtake the lieutenant with the general’s last words? — Faith, 
and while I think of it — he let drop that he’d be after not going by 
the pike. The old road by the forge, that goes south, and then turns. 
It’s a dirt road, and easier on his horse, the poor crathur —”’ 

“Thanks. I’ll try the pike,” said Marchmont, from the doorstep. 
“Bah! it’s turning cold! Had you noticed, father, what exceedingly 
thin ice you have around this house?”’ 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING bo7 


“‘By all the powers, my son!’’ answered Father Tierney. ‘The 
moonlight’s desaving you! That is n’t water — that’s firm ground. 
Look out for the flagstaff at the gate, and presint my respects to the 
general. Sure, ’t was a fine donation for the orphans he donated!” 

It was two o’clock of a moonlight night when Captain March- 
mont and his troopers took the road to Williamsport. They passed 
through the silent camp, gave the word to the last sentry, and 
emerged upon the quiet countryside. ‘‘Was a courier before 
them?” ‘Yes, sir — a man on a great bay horse. Said he had im- 
portant dispatches.” 

The moon-flooded road, hard beneath the hoofs of the horses, 
stretched south and west, unmarked by any moving creature. 
Marchmont rode in advance. His horse was strong and fresh; clear 
of the pickets, he put him to the gallop. An hour went by. Nothing 
but the cold, still moonshine, the sound of hoofs upon the metalled 
road, and now and then, in some wayside house, the stealthy lifting 
of a sash, as man or woman looked forth upon the riders. At a toll- 
gate the aide drew rein, leaned from his saddle, and struck against 
the door with a pistol butt. A man opened a window. “Has a 
courier passed, going to Williamsport?”’ 

“Yes, sir. A man ona great bay horse. Three quarters of an hour 
ago.” 

“Was he riding fast?” 

“Yes. Riding fast.” 

Marchmont galloped on, his two troopers behind him. Their 
steeds were good, but not so good as was his. He left them some way 
behind. The night grew old. The moon, which had risen late, was 
high in the heavens. The Englishman traversed a shadowy wood, 
then went by silvered fields. A cabin door creaked; an old negro put 
out a cautious head. ‘Has a courier passed, going to Williams- 
port?” 

“Yaas, sah. Er big man on er big bay. "Bout half er hour ergo, 
sah.” 

Marchmont galloped on. He looked back over his shoulder — his 
men were a mile in the rear. “‘And when I come up with you, my 
friend, what then? On the whole I don’t think I’ll ask you to turn 
with me. We'll go on to Williamsport, and there we’ll hold the 
court of inquiry.” 


128 THE LONG ROLL 


He touched his horse with the spur. The miles of road ran past, 
the air, eager and cold, pressed sharply; there came a feeling of the 
morning. He was now upon a level stretch of road, before him, a 
mile away, a long, bare hill. He crossed a bridge, hollowly sounding 
through the night, and neared the hill. His vision was a trained one, 
exercised by war in many lands. There was a dark object on the 
road before him; it grew in size, but it grew very slowly; it, too, was 
moving. ‘‘You’ve a tired horse, though, lieutenant!’ said the 
aide. “Strain as you may, I’ll catch you up!” His own horse 
devoured the ground, steadily galloping by the frosty fields, through 
the air of earliest dawn. Suddenly, before him, the courier from 
Kelly halted. Mounted against a faint light in the southwestern 
sky, he stood upon the hilltop and waited for the horseman from 
Frederick. The latter took at a gallop the remainder of the level 
road, but at the foot of the hill changed to a trot. Above him, the 
waiting horseman grew life-size. He waited, very quietly, March- 
mont observed, sitting, turned in his saddle, against the sky of 
dawn. “Damned if I know if you’re truly blue or grey!” thought 
the aide. “Did you stop to disarm suspicion, because you saw you’d 
be overtaken —”’ 

Another minute and the two were in speaking distance; another, 
and they were together on the hilltop. “‘Good-morning!”’ said 
McNeill. “‘What haste to Williamsport?” He bent forward in the 
light that was just strong enough to see by. “Why — It is yester- 
day’s comrade! Good-morning, Captain Marchmont!”’ 

““We must have started,” said Marchmont, ‘‘somewhere near the 
same hour. I have a communication from General Banks for the 
commander at Williamsport.” 

If the other raised his brows over the aide’s acting courier twice 
in twenty-four hours, the action did not appear in the yet uncertain 
light. Apparently McNeill took the statement easily, upon its face 
value. “In that case,’”’ he said with amicableness, ‘“‘I shall have the 
pleasure of your company a little longer. We must be about six 
miles out, I should think.” 

“About that distance,” agreed the other. “And as at this un- 
earthly hour I certainly cannot see the colonel, and as your horse is 
evidently spent, why go the rest of the way at a gallop?” 

“It was my idea,”’ said McNeill, “to pass the river early. If I can 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING 129 


gain the big woods before the day is old, so much the better. Dandy 
is tired, it is true, but he has a certain staying quality. However, 
we will go more slowly now.” 

They put themselves in motion. ‘‘Two men are behind us,” 
remarked the man from Romney. 

“Yes. There they come through the fields. Two troopers who are 
riding with me — Regulars. They’ll accommodate their pace to 
ours.” 

“Very good,” said the other with serenity, and the two rode on, 
Marchmont’s men a little way behind. By now the stars had faded, 
the moon looked wan, there was a faint rose in the east. Far in a 
vale to the left a cock crew, and was answered from across a stream. 
To the south, visible between and above the fringing trees, a ribbon 
of mist proclaimed the river. The two men rode, not in silence, but 
still not with yesterday’s freedom of speech. There was, however, 
no quietude that the chill ebb of the hour and the weariness of over- 
work might not account for. They spoke of this and that briefly, but 
amicably. “Will you report at headquarters?” asked Marchmont, 
“before attempting the Virginia shore?”’ 

“T donot yet know. There is no occasion, as I have all instructions 
from General Banks. I wish to make no unnecessary delay.” 

“Have you the countersign?”’ 

“ce Yes.” 

“Will you cross by the ferry?” 

“T hardly think so. Ashby may be watching that and the ford 
below. There is a place farther up the river that I may try.” 

“That is, after you pass through Williamsport?” 

“Yes, a mile or two beyond.” 

The light increased. Gold clouds barred the east, the cocks crew, 
and crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown corn- 
fields. The road now ran at no great distance from the canal and the 
river. First came the canal, mirroring between trodden banks the 
red east, then the towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, 
and willow, then the Potomac veiled with mist. They were drawing 
near to Williamsport. The day’s travel had begun. They met or 
overtook workers upon the road, sutlers’ carts, ordnance wagons, a 
squad of artillerymen conducting a gun, a country doctor in an old 
buggy, two boys driving calves yoked together. The road made a 


130 THE LONG ROLL 


curve to the north, like a sickle. On the inland side it ran beneath a 
bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a twelve-foot embankment 
dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where the corn stood in 
shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the north into the 
pike, they encountered a company of infantry. 

Marchmont checked his horse. ‘‘I’m not sure, but I think I 
know the officer. Be so good as to await me a moment, lieutenant.”’ 

He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low 
voices. The infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, 
and discussed arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a 
number of tall men, lean and sinewy, with a sweep of line and un- 
constraint of gesture that smacked of hunters’ ways and mountain 
exercise. The two troopers from Frederick City came up. The 
place of the cross-roads showed animated and blue. The sun pushed 
its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in 
the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the 
courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road. 
“Lieutenant McNeill,” said the aide with quietness, “there 
seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless 
everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney 
will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport head- 
quarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I 
regret the interruption — not a long continued one, I trust — to our 
pleasant relations.”’ 

McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had 
come together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled 
with his eyes. “If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can 
help the matter. To headquarters, of course — the sooner the better! 
I can have no possible objection.” 

He touched his horse and advanced a little farther into the road. 
All the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for 
the moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. “‘ You know this 
officer, Miller?” called the captain of infantry. 

Miller saluted. ‘‘No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he 
crossed yesterday. We talked a little. ‘You’ve got a Southern 
voice,’ says I, and he says, ‘Yes. I was born in the valley of the 
South Branch.’ ‘You’ll find company here,’ says I, ‘for we’ve got 
some northwestern Virginians —’ ” 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING ra 


“By jingo!” cried the captain, “that’s true! There’s a squad of 
them here.” He raised his voice. ‘“‘ Men from northwest Virginia, 
advance!” 

A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as 
hunters, eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of 
the nineteenth. “Do any of you men know the South Branch of the 
Potomac ?”’ 

Three voices made themselves heard. ‘Know it like a book.” — 
“Don’t know it like a book — know it like I know my gun and 
dawg.” —“‘Don’t know any good of it —they-uns air all rebels 
down that-a-way!”’ 

“Especially,” said a fourth voice, “the McNeills.” 

The courier from Kelly glanced at him sharply. “And what have 
you got, my man, against the McNeills ?”’ 

“T’ve got something,” stated the mountaineer doggedly. “Some- 
thing ever since afore the Mexican War. Root and branch, I’ve got 
something against them. When I heard, over there in Grant, that 
they was hell-bent for the Confederacy, I just went, hell-bent, for 
the other side. Root and branch, I know them, and root and branch 
they’re damned rebels —’”’ 

“Do you know,” demanded the captain, “this one? This is 
Lieutenant McNeill.” 

The man looked, General Kelly’s courier facing him squarely. 
There was a silence upon the road to Williamsport. The moun- 
taineer spat. “‘He may be a lieutenant, but he ain’t a McNeill. 
Not from the South Branch valley, he ain’t.”’ 

“He says he is.” 

“Do you think, my friend,” asked the man in question, and he 
looked amused, “‘that you really know all the McNeills, or their 
party? The valley of the South Branch is long and wide, and the 
families are large. One McNeill has simply escaped your observ- 
ation.” 

“There ain’t,’”’ said the man, with grimness, ‘‘a damned one of 
them that has escaped my observation, and there ain’t one of them 
that ain’t a damned rebel. They’re with Ashby now, and those of 
them that ain’t with Ashby are with Jackson. And you may be 
Abraham Lincoln or General Banks, but you ain’t a McNeill!”’ 

The ranks opened and there emerged a stout German musician. 


132 THE LONG ROLL 


“Herr Captain! I was in Winchester before I ran away and joined 
der Union. Herr Captain, I haf seen this man. I haf seen him in der 
grey uniform, with der gold sword and der sash. And, lieber Gott, 
dot horse is known! Dot horse is der horse of Captain Richard 
Cleave. Dot horse is named Dundee.” 

““¢Tyundee —’” exclaimed Marchmont. ‘‘That’s the circum- 
stance. You started to say ‘Dundee.’ ” 

He gave an abrupt laugh. “On the whole, I like you even better 
than I did — but it’s a question now for a drumhead and a provost 
guard. I’m sorry —”’ 

The other’s hand had been resting upon his horse’s neck. Sud- 
denly there was a motion of his knee, a pressure of this hand, a curi- 
ous sound, half speech, half cry, addressed to the bay beneath him. 
Dundee backed, gathered himself together, arose in air, cleared the 
rail fence, overpassed the embankment and the rivulet beneath, 
touched the frosted earth of the cornfield, and was away like an 
arrow toward the misty white river. Out of the tumult upon the 
road rang a shot. Marchmont, the smoking pistol still in hand, 
urged his horse to the leap, touched in turn the field below, and at 
top speed followed the bay. He shouted to the troopers behind him; 
their horses made some difficulty, but in another moment they, too, 
were in pursuit. Rifles flashed from the road, but the bay had 
reached a copse that gave a moment’s shelter. Horse and rider 
emerged unhurt from the friendly walls of cedar and locust. “‘For- 
ward, sharpshooters!”’ cried the infantry captain. A lieutenant and 
half a dozen men made all haste across the fence, down the low bluff, 
and over the field. As they ran one fired, then another, but the 
fleeing horse kept on, the rider close to the neck, in their sight, 
beyond the water, the Virginia shore. The bay moved as though he 
knew not fatigue, but only a friend’s dire need. The stock told; 
many a race had been won by his forefathers. What his rider’s hand 
and voice conveyed cannot be precisely known, but that which was 
effected was an access of love, courage, and understanding of the end 
desired. He moved with every power drawn to the point in hand. 
Marchmont, only a few lengths behind, fired again. The ball went 
through Cleave’s sleeve, grazing his arm and Dundee’s shoulder. 
The two shot on, Marchmont behind, then the two mounted men, 
then the sharpshooters, running afoot. From the road the remainder 


AS JOSEPH WAS A-WALKING 133 


of the company watched with immemorial, white-heat interest the 
immemorial incident. ‘“‘He’s wounded — the bay’s wounded, too! 
They ’ll get him at the canal! — Thar’s a bridge around the bend, 
but he don’t know it! — Climb atop the fence; ye can see better —”’ 

The canal, deep between willowy banks, a moat to be overpassed 
without drawbridge, lay ahead of the foremost horse and rider. A 
moment and the two burst through the screen of willows, another, 
and from the high, bare bank they had leaped into the narrow, deep, 
and sluggish stream. “‘ That horse’s wounded — he’s sinking! No, 
by God, he ain’t! Whar’s the captain from Frederick! Thar he is 
— thar he is!”” Marchmont vanished into the belt of willows. The 
two troopers had swerved; they knew of the bridge beyond the turn. 
Dundee swam the canal. The bank before him, up to the towpath, 
was of loose earth and stone, steep and difficult. He climbed it like 
a cat-o’-mountain. As he reached the towpath Marchmont ap- 
peared before the willows. His horse, a powerful sorrel, took the 
water unhesitatingly, but the opposite bank made trouble. It was 
but a short delay; while the soldiers on the road held their breath he 
was up and away, across the wide field between canal and river. The 
troopers, too, had thundered across the bridge. The sharpshooters 
were behind them, blue moving points between the shocked corn. 
The field was wide, rough, and furrowed, bordered on its southern 
side by a line of sycamores, leafless and tall, a lacework of white 
branches against the now brilliant sky. Beyond the sycamores lay 
the wide river, beyond the river lay Virginia. Dundee, red of eye 
and nostril, foam streaked and quivering, raced on, his rider talking 
to him as to a lover. But the bay was sore tired, and the sorrel 
gained. Marchmont sent his voice before him. “Surrender! You'll 
never reach the other side!”’ 

“T’ll try mighty hard,” answered Cleave between his teeth. He 
caressed his horse, he made their two hearts one, he talked to him, 
he crooned an air the stallion knew, — 


Then fling ope your gates, and let me go free, 
For it’s up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee! 


Superbly the bay answered. But the sorrel, too, was a thorough- 
bred, fresh when he left Frederick. Stride by stride he gained. 
Cleave crashed into the belt of sycamores. Before him was the 


134 THE LONG ROLL 


Potomac, cold, wide, mist-veiled. He heard Marchmont break into 
the wood and turned. The aide’s arm was raised, and a shaft of red 
sunlight struck the barrel of his pistol. Before his finger could move 
Cleave fired. 

The sorrel, pierced through the shoulder, swerved violently, 
reared, and plunged, all but unseating his rider. Marchmont’s ball 
passed harmlessly between the branches of trees. The bay and his 
master sprang from the low bank into the flood. So veiled was it by 
the heavy mist that, six strokes from shore, all outlines grew indis- 
tinct. 

The two troopers reached the shore. “Where is he, sir? — Out 
there?’”’? They emptied their pistols — it was firing into a cloud. 
The sharpshooters arrived. Skilful and grim, they raised their rifles, 
scanned the expanse of woolly white before them, and fired at what, 
now here, now there, they conceived might be a moving object. The 
mist lay close to the river, like a pall. They fired and fired again. 
Other infantrymen, arriving, talked excitedly. “Thar! — No, thar! 
That’s him, downstream! Fire!— Darn it! ’T was a piece of 
drift.”’ Across the river, tall against the south, wreathed and linked | 
by lianas of grape, showed, far withdrawn and shadowy, the trees 
of the Virginia shore. The rifles continued to blaze, but the mist 
held, and there came no answering scream of horse or cry of 
man. Marchmont spoke at last, curtly. “That’s enough! He’s 
either hit and drowned, or he has reached home. I wish we were 
on the same side.” 

One of the troopers uttered an exclamation. ‘‘Hear that, sir! 
He’s across! Damned if he is n’t halloaing to tell us so!” 

Faintly, from the southern shore, came a voice. It was raised in 
a line of song, — 


“ As Joseph was a-walking, 
He heard the angels sing” — 


CHAPTER Al 


‘‘ THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP” 


corner in the wood and came with suddenness upon a ve- 

dette, posted beneath a beech tree. The vedette brought his 
short rifle to bear upon the apparition. “‘Halt! Halt, you in blue! 
Halt, I say, or I’ll blow your head off.” 

Down an aisle of the woods, deep in russet leaves, appeared a grey 
figure. ‘Hello, Company F! It’s all right! It’s all right! It’s Cap- 
tain Cleave, 65th Virginia. Special service.’’? Musket in hand, Allan 
came at arun through the slanting sunshine of the forest. “It’s all 
right, Cuninghame — Colonel Ashby will understand.” 

“Here,” said the vedette, ‘“‘is Colonel Ashby now.” 

From another direction, out of the filmy and amethyst haze that 
closed each forest vista, came a milk-white horse, stepping high over 
the fallen leaves. The rider, not tall, black-bearded, with a pale, 
handsome face, sat like a study for some great sculptor’s equestrian 
masterpiece. In a land where all rode well, his was superb horse- 
manship. The cape of his grey coat was lined with scarlet, his soft 
wide hat had a black plume; he wore long boots and white gaunt- 
lets. The three beneath the beech saluted. He spoke in a pensive 
and musical voice. ‘A prisoner, Cuninghame? Where did you get 
him? — Ah, it’s Richard Cleave!” 

The bright December day wore on, sunny and cold in the woods, 
sunny and cold above the river. The water, clear now of mist, 
sparkled, a stream of diamonds, from shore to shore, except where 
rose Dam No. 5. Here the diamonds fell in cataracts. A space of 
crib-work, then falling gems, another bit of dry logs in the sun, then 
again brilliancy and thunder of water over the dam; this in sequence 
to the Maryland side. That side reached, there came a mere ribbon 
of brown earth, and beyond this ran the Chesapeake and Ohio 
Canal. To-day boats from Cumberland were going down the canal 
with coal and forage, and boats from Harper’s Ferry were coming up 


R Corer CLEAVE and his horse, two tired wights, turned a 


136 THE LONG ROLL 


with a reinforcing regiment of soldiers for Lander at Hancock. It 
was bright and lively weather, and the negroes talked to the mules 
on the towpath, and the conductors of coal and forage hailed the 
soldiers, and the soldiers shouted back. The banks rang to laughter 
and voices. “‘Where’re you fellows going?” — “Going to Hancock, 
—no, don’t know where it is!” — “ Purty day! Seen any rebels 
crost the river?’’ — “At Williamsport they told us there was a rebel 
spy got away this morning — galloped down a cliff like Israel Put- 
nam and took to the river, and if he was drowned or not they don’t 
know —” “No, he was n’t drowned; he got away, but he was shot. 
Anyhow, they say he had n’t been there long enough ‘to find out 
anything.’’ — ‘‘ Wish J could find out something — wish I could find 
out when we’re going to fight!” — “Low braidge!’”’ — “That’s 
a pretty big dam. What’s the troops over there in the field? 
Indiana? That’s a right nice picnic-ground — 
‘ Kiss me good-bye, my dear,’ he said; 
‘When I come back, we will be wed.’ 
Crying, she kissed him, ‘Good-bye, Ned!’ 
And the soldier followed the drum, 


The drum, 
The echoing, echoing drum!” 


Over on the Virginia side, behind the friendly woods paced 
through by Ashby’s men, the height of the afternoon saw the arrival 
of the advance guard of that portion of the Army of the Valley which 
was to cover operations against Dam No. 5. Later in the day came 
Garnett with the remainder of the Stonewall Brigade and a two-gun 
detachment of the Rockbridge Artillery, and by sunset the militia 
regiments were up. Camp was pitched behind a line of hills, within 
the peninsula made by the curve of the river. This rising ground 
masked the movement; moreover, with Ashby between any body of 
infantry and an enemy not in unreasonable force, that body worked 
and ate and slept in peace of mind. Six miles down the river, over on 
the Maryland side, was Williamsport, with an infantry command and 
with artillery. Opposite Dam No. 5 in the Maryland fields beyond 
the canal, troops were posted, guarding that very stretch of river. 
From a little hill above the tents frowned their cannon. At Han- 
cock, at Hagerstown, and at Frederick were other thousands, and 
all, from the general of the division to the corporal drilling an awk- 


THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP 137 


ward squad in the fields beside the canal, thought of the Army of the 
Valley as at Winchester. 

With the Confederate advance guard, riding Little Sorrel, his 
cadet cap over his eyes, his uniform whole and clean, but dis- 
coloured like a November leaf from rain and dust and dust and rain, 
with great boots and heavy cavalry spurs, with his auburn beard 
and his deep-set grey-blue eyes, with his forehead broad and high, 
and his aquiline nose, and his mouth, wide and thin-lipped, came 
Jackson. The general’s tent was a rude affair. His soldiers pitched 
it beneath a pine, beside a small trickling stream half choked with 
leaves. The staff was quartered to right and left, and a clump of 
pines in the rear served for an Arcadian kitchen. A camp-stool and a 
table made of a board laid upon two stumps of trees furnished the 
leaf-strewn terrace before the tent. Here, Cleave, coming to re- 
port, found his commander. 

Jackson was sitting, feet planted as usual, arms at side as usual, 
listening to his chief of staff. He acknowledged Cleave’s salute, 
with a glance, a slight nod of the head, and a motion of the hand to 
one side. The young man waited, standing by a black haw upon the 
bank of the little stream. The respectful murmur of the chief of 
staff came to an end. “Very good, major. You will send a courier 
back to Falling Waters to halt General Carson there. He is to be 
prepared to make a diversion against Williamsport in the morning. 
I will give precise instructions later. What of this mill by the river?” 

“Tt is a very strong, old, stone mill, sir, with windows. It would 
command any short-range attack upon the workers.” 

“Good! good! We will put riflemen there. As soon as General 
Garnett is up, send him to me.” 

From the not-distant road came a heavy rumble of wheels and the 
sound of horses’ feet. ‘There are the guns, now, sir.” 

“Yes. They must wait until nightfall to get into position. Send 
Captain McLaughlin to me in half an hour’s time.” 

“Yes, sir. Captain Colston of the 2d is here —’”’ 

“Very good. I will see him now. That is all, major.” 

The chief of staff withdrew. Captain Colston of the 2d ap- 
proached from the shadows beyond the big pine and saluted. “ You 
are from this region, captain?”’ 

“Yes, sir. The Honeywood Colstons.” 


138 THE LONG ROLL 


“This stone mill is upon your land?” 

“Yes, sir. My mother owns it.” 

“You have been about the dam as a boy?” 

“Yes, sir. In the water above it and in the water below it. I know 
every log, I reckon. It works the mill.” 

“Tf we break it, it will work the mill no longer. In addition, if the 
enemy cross, they will probably destroy the property.” 

“Yes, sir. My mother and I would not let that weigh with us. As 
I know the construction I should esteem it an honour, sir, if I might 
lead the party. I think I may say that I know where the cribs could 
be most easily cut.” 

“Very good then, sir. You will report for duty at nine to-night. 
Captain Holliday of the 33d and Captain Robinson of the 27th, with 
a number of their men, have volunteered for this service. It is not 
without danger, as you know. That is all.”’ 

Captain Colston departed. “Now, Captain Cleave,” said the 
general. 

A few minutes later, the report ended, Jackson refolded General 
Banks’s letter to General Kelly and put it into his pocketbook. 
‘Good! good!”’ he said, and turned slightly on the camp-stool so as 
to face the river and the north. “It’s all right, captain, it’s all 
right!” 

“T wish, sir,” said Cleave, “that with ten times the numbers you 
have, you were leading us across the river. We might force a peace, 
I think, and that right quickly.” 

Jackson nodded. “Yes, sir, I ought to have every soldier in Vir- 
ginia — if they could be gotten here in time every soldier in the 
Carolinas. There would then be but a streamlet of blood where now 
there is going to be a great river. The streamlet should run through 
the land of them with whom we are righteously at war. As it is, the 
great river will run through ours.” He rose. ‘‘ You have done your 
mission well, sir. The 65th will be up presently.” 


It took three days to cut Dam No. 5. On the fourth the brigade 
went back to Winchester. A week later came Loring with the Army 
of the Kanawha, and on the third of January the whole force found 
itself again upon the road. 

In the afternoon the weather changed. The New Year had come 


THE DATH AND ROMNEY TRIP | 139 


in smiling, mild as April, dust in the roads, a blue sky overhead. 
The withered goldenrod and gaunt mullein stalks and dead asters 
by the wayside almost seemed to bloom again, while the winter 
wheat gave an actual vernal touch. The long column, winding 
somewhere — no one knew where, but anyhow on the Pugh Town 
Road and in a northwesterly direction (even Old Jack could n’t 
keep them from knowing that they were going northwest!) — was 
in high spirits. At least, the Stonewall Brigade was in spirits. It 
was said that Loring’s men did n’t want to come, anyhow. The 
men whistled and sang, laughed, joked, were lavish of opinions as to 
all the world in general and the Confederate service in particular. 
They were sarcastic. The Confederate private was always sarcastic, 
but throughout the morning there had been small sting in their 
remarks. Breakfast — “at early dawn’’ — was good and plentiful. 
Three days’ rations had been served and cooked, and stowed in 
haversacks. But, so lovely was the weather, so oppressive in the 
sunshine would be a heavy weight to carry, so obliging were the 
wagon drivers, so easy in many regiments the Confederate disci- 
pline, that overcoats, blankets, and, in very many instances haver- 
sacks, had been consigned before starting to the friendly care of the 
wagons in the rear. The troops marched light, and in a good hu- 
mour. True, Old Jack seemed bent on getting there — wherever 
“there”? was — in a tremendous hurry. Over every smooth stretch 
the men were double-timed, and there was an unusual animus 
against stragglers. There grew, too, a moral certitude that from the 
ten minutes’ lawful rest in each hour at least five minutes was being 
filched. Another and still more certain conclusion was that the 
wagon train was getting very far behind. However, the morning 
was still sweet, and the column, as a whole, cheerful. It was a long 
column — the Stonewall Brigade, three brigades of Loring’s, five 
batteries, and a few cavalry companies; eight thousand, five hun- 
dred men in all. 

Mid-day arrived, and the halt for dinner. Alas for the men without 
haversacks! They looked as though they had borne all the burdens 
of the march. There was hunger within and scant sympathy with- 
out. “Did n’t the damned fools know that Old Jack always keeps 
five miles ahead of wagon trains and hell fire?”’ “‘ Here, Saunders! 
take these corn pones over to those damned idiots with the compli- 


140 THE LONG ROLL 


pliments of Mess No. 4. We know that they have Cherrystone 
oysters, canvas-back ducks, terrapin, and peach brandy in their 
haversacks, and that they meant to ask us to join them. So unfor- 
tunate!”’ 

The cavalry marched on, the artillery marched on, the infantry 
marched on. The bright skies subtly changed. The blue grew 
fainter; a haze, white, harsh, and cold, formed gradually, and a 
slight wind began to blow. The aster and. goldenrod, the dried 
ironweed and sumach, the red rose hips and magenta pokeberry 
stalks looked dead enough now, dead and dreary upon the weary, 
weary road. The men sang no more; the more weakly shivered. 
Before long the sky was an even greyish-white, and the wind had 
much increased. Coming from the northwest, it struck the column 
in the face; moreover, it grew colder and colder. All types shivered 
now, the strong and the weak, the mounted officer and the leg- 
weary private, the men with overcoats, and the men without. The 
column moved slower and slower, all heads bent before the wind, 
which now blew with violence. It raised, too, a blinding dust. A 
curt order ran down the lines for less delay. The regiments changed 
gait, tried quick time along a level stretch, and left behind a large 
number of stragglers. The burst of speed was for naught, they went 
the slower thereafter, and coming to a long, bleak hill, crept up it 
like tortoises — but without protecting shells. By sunset the cold 
was intense. Word came back that the head of the column was 
going into camp, and a sigh of approbation arose from all. But when 
brigade by brigade halted, deployed, and broke ranks, it appeared 
that “going into camp” was rather a barren phrase. The wagons 
had not come up; there were no tents, no blankets, no provisions. A 
northwester was blowing, and the weather-wise said that there 
would be snow ere morning. The regiments spread over bare fields, 
enclosed by rail fences. There were a small, rapidly freezing stream 
and thick woods, skirting the fields. In the woods were fallen 
boughs and pine cones enough to make the axes in the company 
wagons not greatly missed, and detachments were sent to gather 
fagots. The men, cold and exhausted, went, but they looked wist- 
fully at the rail fences all around them, so easy to demolish, so splen- 
did to burn! Orders on the subject were stringent. Officers will be 
held responsible for any destruction of property. We are here to protect 


THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP i141 


and defend, not to destroy. The men gathered dead branches and 
broke down others, heaped them together in the open fields, and 
made their camp-fires. The Rockbridge Artillery occupied a fallow 
field covered with fox grass, dead Michaelmas daisy, and drifted 
leaves. It was a good place for the poor horses, the battery thought. 
But the high wind blew sparks from the fires and lighted the grass. 
The flames spread and the horses neighed with terror. The battery 
was forced to move, taking up position at last in a ploughed field 
where the frozen furrows cut the feet, and the wind had the sweep of 
an unchained demon. An infantry regiment fared better. It was in 
a stretch of fenced field between the road and the freezing brook. 
A captain, native of that region, spoke to the lieutenant-colonel, and 
the latter spoke to the men. “Captain says that we are camp- 
ing upon his land, and he’s sorry he can’t give us a better welcome! 
But we can have his fence rails. Give him a cheer, and build your 
fires!”? The men cheered lustily, and tore the rails apart, and had 
rousing fires and were comfortable; but the next morning Stonewall 
Jackson suspended from duty the donor of his own fences. The bri- 
gades of Loring undoubtedly suffered the most. They had seen, upon 
the Monterey line, on the Kanawha, the Gauley, and the Green- 
briar, rough and exhausting service. And then, just when they were 
happy at last in winter quarters, they must pull up stakes and hurry 
down the Valley to join ‘Fool Tom Jackson”’ of the Virginia Mili- 
tary Institute and one brief day of glory at Manassas! Loring, a 
gallant and dashing officer, was popular with them. “Fool Tom 
Jackson” was not. They complained, and they very honestly 
thought that they had upon their side justice, common sense, and 
common humanity — to say nothing of military insight! The bitter 
night was bitterer to them for their discontent. Many were from 
eastern Virginia or from the states to the south, not yet inured to 
the winter heights and Stonewall Jackson’s way. They slept on 
frozen ground, surrounded by grim mountains, and they dreamed 
uneasily of the milder lowlands, of the yet green tangles of bay and 
myrtle, of quiet marshes and wide, unfreezing waters. In the night- 
time the clouds thickened, and there came down a fine rain, mixed 
with snow. In the morning, fields, hillsides, and road appeared glazed 
with ice — and the wagons were not up! 

The country grew rougher, lonelier, a series of low mountains and 





142 THE LONG ROLL 


partly cleared levels. To a few in the creeping column it may have 
occurred that Jackson chose unfrequented roads, therefore narrow, 
therefore worse than other roads, to the end that his policy of utter 
secrecy might be the better served; but to the majority his course 
seemed sprung from a certain cold wilfulness, a harshness without 
object, unless his object were to wear out flesh and bone. The road, 
such as it was, was sheeted with ice. The wind blew steadily from 
the northwest, striking the face like a whip, and the fine rain and 
snow continued to fall and to freeze as it fell. What, the evening 
before, had been hardship, now grew to actual misery. The column 
faltered, delayed, halted, and still the order came back, ‘‘ The gen- 
eral commanding wishes the army to press on.”’ The army stum- 
bled toits now bleeding feet, and did its best with a hill like Calvary. 
Up and down the column was heard the report of muskets, men fall- 
ing and accidentally discharging their pieces. The company officers 
lifted monotonous voices, weary and harsh as reeds by a winter 
pond. Close up, men — close up — close up! 

In the afternoon Loring, riding at the head of his brigades, sent a 
staff officer forward with representations. The latter spurred his 
horse, but rapid travelling was impossible upon that ice-sheathed 
road. It was long before he overtook the rear of the Stonewall 
Brigade. Buffeted by the wind, the grey uniforms pale under a glaze 
of sleet, the red of the colours the only gleam of cheer, the line 
crawled over a long hill, icy, unwooded, swept by the shrieking 
wind. Stafford in passing exchanged greetings with several of the 
mounted officers. These were in as bad case as their men, nigh 
frozen themselves, distressed for the horses beneath them, and for 
the staggering ranks, striving for anger with the many stragglers and 
finding only compunction, in blank ignorance as to where they were 
going and for what, knowing only that whereas they had made 
seventeen miles the day before, they were not likely to make seven 
to-day. He passed the infantry and came up with the artillery. The 
steep road was ice, the horses were smooth shod. The poor brutes 
slipped and fell, cutting themselves cruelly. The men were down in 
the road, lifting the horses, dragging with them at gun and caisson. 
The crest of the hill reached, the carriages must be held back, kept 
from sliding sideways in the descent. Going down was worse than 
coming up. The horses slipped and fell; the weight of gun and cais- 


THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP 143 


son came upon them; together they rolled to the foot, where they 
must be helped up and urged to the next ascent. Oaths went here 
and there upon the wind, hurt whinnies, words of encouragement, 
cracking of whips, straining and groaning of gun carriages. 

Stafford left the artillery behind, slowly climbed another hill, and 
more slowly yet picked his way down the glassy slope. Before him 
lay a great stretch of meadow, white with sleet, and beyond it he 
saw the advance guard disappearing in a fold of the wrinkled hills. 
As he rode he tried to turn his thoughts from the physical cold and 
wretchedness to some more genial chamber of the brain. He had 
imaginative power, ability to build for himself out of the void. It 
had served him well in the past — but not so well the last year or 
two. He tried now to turn the ring and pass from the bitter day 
and road into some haunt of warmth and peace. Albemarle and 
summer — Greenwood and a quiet garden. That did not answer! 
Harassment, longing, sore desire, check and bitterness — unhappi- 
ness there as here! He tried other resting places that once had an- 
swered, poets’ meadows of asphodel, days and nights culled like a 
bouquet from years spent in a foreign land, old snatches out of boy- 
hood. These answered no longer, nor did a closing of the eyes and a 
sinking downward, downward through the stratas of being intosome 
cavern, reckonless and quiet, of the under-man. It as little served to 
front the future and try to climb, like Jack of the Beanstalk, to some 
plane above and beyond war and disappointment and denying. He 
was unhappy, and he spoke wearily to his horse, then shut his lips 
and faced the Siberian road. Entering in his turn the fold of the 
hills, he soon came up with the advance. As he passed the men on 
foot a sudden swirl of snow came in larger flakes from the leaden 
skies. Before him were a dozen horsemen, riding slowly. The air 
was now filled with the great white flakes; the men ahead, in their 
caped overcoats, with their hats drawn low, plodding on tired horses 
between the hills, all seen vaguely through the snow veil, had a sud- 
den wintry, desolate, and far-away seeming. He said to himself that 
they were ghosts from fifty years back, ghosts of the Grand Army 
in the grasp of General January. He made what haste he could and 
came up with Stonewall Jackson, riding with Ashby and with his 
staff. All checked their horses, the general a little advanced, Staf- 
ford facing him, ‘‘From General Loring, sir.” 


144 THE LONG ROLL 


“Good! What does he want?”’ 

“There is much suffering among his men, sir. They have seen 
hard service and they have faced it gallantly —”’ 

‘Are his men insubordinate?”’ 

““Not at all, sir. But —”’ 

“You are, I believe, the officer whom General Loring sent me 
once before?”’ 

“Yes, general. Many of the men are without rations. Others 
are almost barefoot. The great number are unused to mountain 
work or to so rigorous a climate.” 

The commanding general sat regarding the emissary with a 
curious chill blankness. In peace, to the outward eye he was a com- 
monplace man; in war he changed. The authority with which he 
was clothed went, no doubt, for much, but it was rather, perhaps, 
that a door had been opened for him. His inner self became visible, 
and that imposingly. The man was there; a firm man, indomitable, 
a thunderbolt of war, a close-mouthed, far-seeing, praying and wor- 
shipping, more or less ambitious, not always just, patriotically 
devoted fatalist and enthusiast, a mysterious and commanding 
genius of an iron sort. When he was angered it was as though 
the offender had managed to antagonize some natural law, or force 
or mass. Such an one had to face, not an irritated human or- 
ganism, but a Gibraltar armed for the encounter. The men who 
found themselves confronted by this anger could and did brace 
themselves against it, but it was with some hopelessness of feeling, 
as of hostility upon a plane where they were at a disadvantage. The 
man now sitting his horse before him on the endless winter road was 
one not easily daunted by outward aspects. Nevertheless he had at 
this moment, in the back of his head, a weary consciousness that 
war was roseate only to young boys and girls, that the day was 
cold and drear, the general hostile, the earth overlaid with dull 
misery, that the immortals, if there were any, must be clamouring 
for the curtain to descend forever upon this shabby human stage, 
painful and sordid, with its strutting tragedians and its bellman’s 
cry of World Drama! The snow came down thickly, in large flakes; a 
horse shook himself, rubbed his nose against his fellow’s neck, and 
whinnied mournfully. The pause, which had seemed long, was not 
really so. Jackson turned toward the group of waiting officers. 
“Major Cleave.” 


THE BATH AND: ROMNEY ERIP . 145 


Cleave pushed his horse a little into the road. “Sir.” 

“You will return with this officer to General Loring’s command. 
It is far in the rear. You will give General Loring this note.”” As he 
spoke he wrote upon a leaf torn from his pocket-book. The words as 
he traced them read: “General Jackson’s compliments to General 
Loring. He has some fault to find with the zeal of General Loring, his 
officers and men. General Loring will represent to himself that in war 
soldiers are occasionally called upon to travel in winter weather. Cam- 
paigns cannot always be conducted in seasons of roses. General Loring 
will urge his men forward, without further complaint. T. J. Jackson, 
Major-General.” 

He folded the leaf and gave it to Richard Cleave, then touched 
Little Sorrel with his heavy spur and with Ashby and the staff rode 
on through the falling snow, between the hills. The small cavalry 
advance passed, too, grey and ghost-like in the grasp of General 
January, disappearing within the immense and floating veil of the 
snow. When all were gone Stafford and Cleave turned their horses’ 
heads toward the distant column, vaguely seen in the falling day. 
Stafford made an expressive sound. 

“T am sorry,” said Cleave gravely. “‘But when you have been 
with him longer you will understand him better.” 

“T think that he is really mad.”’ 

The other shook his head. “‘He is not mad. Don’t get that idea, 
Stafford. It zs hard on the troops, poor fellows! How the snow 
falls! We had better turn out and let the guns pass.”’ 

They moved into the untrodden snow lying in the fence corners 
and watched the guns, the horses, and men strain past with a sombre 
noise. Officers and men knew Richard Cleave, and several hailed 
him. ‘Where in hell are we going, Cleave? Old Jack likes you! Tell 
him, won’t you, that it’s damned hard on the horses, and we have n’t 
much to eat ourselves? Tell him even the guns are complaining! 
Tell him — Yes, sir! Get up there, Selim! Pull, Flora, pull! — 
Whoa! — Damnation! Come lay a hand to this gun, boys! Where’s 
Hetterich! Hetterich, this damned wheel’s off again!” 

The delay threatening to be considerable, the two men rode on, 
picking their way, keeping to the low bank, or using the verge of the 
crowded road. At last they left the artillery, and found themselves 
again upon a lonely way. “‘I love that arm,” said Cleave. ‘‘ There 


146 THE LONG ROLL 


is n’t a gun there that is n’t alive to me.” He turned in his saddle 
and looked back at the last caisson vanishing over the hill. 

“Shall you remain with the staff?” 

“No. Only through this campaign. I prefer the line.” 

The snow fell so fast that the trampled and discoloured road was 
again whitening beneath it. Half a mile ahead was visible the Stone- 
wall Brigade, coming very slowly, beaten by the wind, blinded by 
the snow, a spectral grey serpent upon the winding road. 

Stafford spoke abruptly. ‘I am in your debt for the arrange- 
ments I found made for me in Winchester. I have had no oppor- 
tunity to thank you. You were extremely good so to trouble 
yourself —”’ 

“It was no trouble. As I told you once before, I am anxious to 
serve you.” 

They met the brigade, Garnett riding at the head. ‘‘Good-day, 
Richard Cleave,” he said. “‘We are all bound for Siberia, I think!”’ 
Company by company the regiments staggered by, in the whirling 
snow, the colours gripped by stiffening hands. There were blood 
stains on the frozen ground. Oh, the shoes, the shoes that a non- 
manufacturing country with closed ports had to make in haste and 
send its soldiers! Oh, the muskets, heavy, dull, ungleaming, weight- 
ing the fiercely aching shoulders! Oh, the snow, mounded on cap, on 
cartridge box, on rolled blanket and haversack. Oh, the northwest 
wind like a lash, the pinched stomach, the dry lips, the wavering 
sight, the weariness excessive! The strong men were breathing 
hard, their brows drawn together and upward. The weaker soldiers 
had a ghastly look, as of life shrunk to a point. Close up, men! Close 
up — close up! 

Farther down the line, on the white bank to which they tried to 
keep, the column almost filling the narrow road, Cleave checked his 
horse. ‘‘I have a brother in this regiment, and he has been ill —” 

A company came stumbling by, heads bent before the bitter 
wind. He spoke to its captain, the captain spoke to a lieutenant, 
the lieutenant to a private in the colour guard, who at once fell out of 
line and sprang somewhat stiffly across the wayside depression to 
the two horsemen drawn up upon the bank. ‘Well, Richard! It’s 
snowing.” 

“Have you had anything to eat, Will ?”’ 


THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP — 147 


“Loads. I hada pone of cornbread and a Mr. Rat in my file hada 
piece of bacon. We added them and then divided them, and it was 
lovely, so far as it went!” He laughed ruefully. “Only I’ve still 
that typhoid fever appetite —”’ 

His brother took from under the cape of his coat a small parcel. 
“Here are some slices of bread and meat. I hoped I would see you, 
and so I saved them. Where is that comforter Miriam knitted 
you?” 

The boy’s eyes glistened as he put out a gaunt young hand and 
took the parcel. “‘Won’t Mr. Rat and I have a feast! We were just 
talking of old Judge at the Institute, and of how good his warm 
loaves used to taste! Seems like an answer to prayer. Thank you, 
Richard! Miriam’s comforter? There’s a fellow, a clerk from the 
store at Balcony Falls, who has n’t much stamina and no shoesat all. 
They were bad when he started, and one fell to pieces yesterday, and 
he left most of the other on that bad piece of road this morning. So 
at the last halt we cut my comforter in two and tied up his feet with 
it —I didn’t need it, anyway.”’ He looked over his shoulder. “Well, 
I’d better be catching up!” 

Richard put a hand upon his arm. ‘Don’t give away any more 
clothing. You have your blanket, I see.” 

“Yes, and Mr. Rat has an oilcloth. Oh, we’ll sleep. I could 
sleep now —” he spoke dreamily; ‘“‘right in that fence corner. 
Does n’t it look soft and white? — like a feather bed with lovely 
clean sheets. The fence rails make it look like my old crib at 
home —”’ He pulled himself together with a jerk. “You take care 
of yourself, Richard! I’m all right. Mr. Rat and I were soldiers 
before the war broke out!’’ He was gone, stumbling stiffly across 
to the road, running stiffly to overtake his company. His brother 
looked after him with troubled eyes, then with a sigh picked up the 
reins and followed Stafford toward the darkening east. 

The two going one way, the haggard regiments another, the line 
that seemed interminable came at last toward itsend. The 65th held 
the rear. There were greetings from many throats, and from Com- 
pany A a cheer. Hairston Breckinridge, now its captain, came 
across. ‘‘Judge Allen’s Resolutions — hey, Richard! The world has 
moved since then! I wish Fincastle could see us now — or rather I 
don’t wish it! Oh, we’re holding out all right! The men are trumps.” 


148 THE LONG ROLL 


Mathew Coffin, too, came up. “It doesn’t look much, Major 
Cleave, like the day we marched away! All the serenading and the 
flowers — we never thought war could be ugly.” He glanced dis- 
consolately down at a torn cuff and a great smear of frozen mire 
adorning his coat. ‘I’m rather glad the ladies can’t see us.” 

The Stonewall Brigade went by. There was again a stretch of 
horribly cut road, empty save for here and there poor stragglers, sit- 
ting dismally huddled together beneath a cedar, or limping on pain- 
ful feet, hoping somewhere to overtake “the boys.”’ A horse had 
fallen dead and had been dragged out of the road and through a gap 
in the fencing into a narrow field. Beyond this, on the farther 
boundary of grey rails, three buzzards were sitting, seen like hob- 
goblins through the veiling snow. The afternoon was closing in; it 
could only be said that the world was a dreary one. 

The Army of the Kanawha, Loring’s three brigades, with the bat- 
teries attached, came into view a long way off, grey streaks upon the 
road. Before the two horsemen reached it it had halted for the 
night, broken ranks, and flowed into the desolate fields. There was 
yet an hour of daylight, but discontent had grown marked, the 
murmuring loud, and the halt was made. A few of the wagons were 
up, and a dark and heavy wood filling a ravine gave fagots for the 
gathering. The two aides found Loring himself, middle-aged and 
imposing, old Indian fighter, hero of Contreras, Churubusco, Cha- 
pultepec, and Garita de Belen, commander, since the transference 
of General Robert E. Lee to South Carolina, of the Army of the 
Kanawha, gallant and dashing, with an arm left in Mexico, with a 
gift for picturesque phrases, with a past full of variety and a future 
of a like composition, with a genuine tenderness and care for his 
men, and an entire conviction that both he and his troops were at 
present in the convoy of a madman — they found Loring seated on 
a log beside a small fire and engaged in cooling in the snow a too- 
hot tin cup of coffee. His negro servant busily toasted hardtack; a 
brigadier seated on an opposite log was detailing, half fiercely, half 
plaintively, the conditions under which his brigade was travelling. 
The two from Jackson dismounted, crunched their way over the 
snow and saluted. The general looked up. ‘‘Good-evening, gentle- 
men! Is that you, Stafford? Well, did you do your prettiest — and 
did he respond ?” 


THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP 149 


“Yes, sir, he responded,” replied Stafford, with grimness. “But 
not by me. — Major Cleave, sir, of his staff.” 

Cleave came forward, out of the whirling snow, and gave Jack- 
son’s. missive. It was so dull and dark a late afternoon that all 
things were indistinct. ‘‘Give me a light here, Jupiter!” said 
Loring, and the negro by the fire lit a great sliver of pine and held it 
like a torch above the page. Loring read, and his face grew purple. 
With a suppressed oath he sat a moment, staring at the paper, then 
with his one hand folded it against his knee. His fingers shook, not 
with cold, but with rage. “Very good, very good! That’s what he 
says, is n’tit, all the time? ‘Very good!’ or is it ‘Good, good!’”’ He 
felt himself growing incoherent, pulled himself sharply together, 
and with his one hand thrust the paper into his breast pocket. “It’s 
all right, Stafford. Major Cleave, the Army of the Kanawha wel- 
comes you. Will you stay with us to-night, or have you fifty miles 
to make ere dawn?”’ 

Cleave, it appeared, had not fifty miles to make, but four. He 
must report at the appointed bivouac. Loring tore with his one 
hand a leaf from his pocket-book, found his pencil, and using a 
booted knee for a table, wrote a line, folded and superscribed it. 
“This for General Jackson. Ugh, what freezing weather! Sit 
down and drink a cup of coffee before you go. You, too, Maury. 
Here, Jupiter! hot coffee. Major Cleave, do you remember AXsop’s 
fables?” 

“Yes, sir, — a number of them.” 

““A deal of knowledge there of damned human nature! The frog 
that swelled and swelled and thought himself an ox. Curious how 
your boyhood books come back into your mind! Sit down, gentle- 
men, sit down! Reardon’s got a box of cigars tucked away some- 
where or he is n’t Reardon —”’ 

Along the edge of the not-distant ravine other small fires had been 
built. From the circle about one of these arose a quavering voice — 
a soldier trying to sing cheer into company. 

Dere was an old niggah, dey called him Uncle Ned — 
He ’s dead long ago, long ago! 
He had no wool on de top ob his head, ~ 
De place whar de wool ought to grow. 


Den lay down de shubble an de hoe, 
Hang up de fiddle an de bow — 


CHAPTER = Act 
FOOL TOM JACKSON 


HE REVEREND Mr. Corsin Woop, chaplain to one of Lor- 

ing’s regiments, coming down from the hillside where he had 

spent the night, very literally like a shepherd, found the 
little stream at its foot frozen to the bottom. No morning bath for 
a lover of cleanliness! There had been little water, indeed, to expend 
on any toilet since leaving Winchester. Corbin Wood tried snow for 
his face and hands, but the snow was no longer soft, as it had fallen 
the day before. It was frozen and harsh. “And the holy hermits and 
the saints on pillars never had a bath — apparently never wanted 
one!” | 

Reveille sounded drearily enough from the surrounding moun- 
tains. The fires sprang up, but they did not burn brightly in the 
livid day. The little there was to eat was warmed and eaten. When, 
afterwards, the rolls were called, there were silences. Mr. Ready-to- 
halt, Mr. Faint Heart, Mr. Fearing, and also Mr. Honesty, really 
too ill to march, were somewhere on the backward road to Win- 
chester. Length by length, like a serpent grey and cold, slug- 
gish, unburnished, dull, and bewildered, the column took the road. 
Deeply cut the day before by the cavalry, by Garnett’s brigade, and 
by the artillery, the road was horrible. What had been ridged snow 
was now ridged ice. 

Corbin Wood and his old grey horse were loved by their regiment. 
The chaplain was not, physically, a strong man, and his ways were 
those of a scholar, but the regiment found them lovable. Pluto the 
horse was very wise, very old, very strong and gentle. Upon the 
march he was of use to many beside his master. The regiment had 
grown accustomed to the sight of the chaplain walking through 
dust or mud at the bridle of the grey, saying now and then a 
word in a sober and cheerful fashion to the half-sick or wholly 
weary private seated in his saddle. He was forever giving some one 
_a lift along the road. Certain things that have had small place in 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 151 


the armies of the world were commonplaces in the Confederate 
service. The man on horseback was a more fortunate, but not a 
better man — not even a better born or educated man — than he 
on foot. The long grey lines saw nothing strange in a dismounted 
officer giving a cast of the road to a comrade in the ranks. So, 
to-day, the chaplain’s horse was rather for everybody than for 
the chaplain himself. An old college mate slipping stiffly to earth 
after five inestimable minutes, remonstrated. ‘‘I’d like to see you 
riding, Corbin! Just give yourself a lift, won’t you? Look at Pluto 
looking at that rent in your shoe! You'll never be a bishop if you 
go on this way.” 

The sleet fell and fell, and it was intensely cold. The wagons 
were invisible. It was rumoured that they had taken another road. 
The country was almost a wilderness. At long intervals the troops 
came upon a lonely farmhouse, or a wayside cabin, a mill, a smithy. 
Loring sent ahead a foraging party, with orders to purchase all sup- 
plies. Hardly anything was gotten. Little had been made this year 
and little stored. Moreover, latterly, the Yankees at Bath had 
taken all the stock and poultry and corn — and without paying for 
it either. ‘Yes, sir, there are Yankees at Bath. More’n you can 
shake a stick at!” 

The foragers brought back the news. “‘There are Yankees at 
Bath — eight miles away! Any number of them. Just as certain as 
it’s sleeting, that’s where Old Jack’s going!”’ 

The news running along the column awoke a small flare of inter- 
est. But it filled no empty stomachs, nor dissipated the numbing 
cold. The momentary enthusiasm passed. “Eight miles! Have we 
got to go eight miles to-day? We have n’t made three miles since 
dawn. If George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Julius 
Cesar were here they could n’t get this army eight miles to-day!” 

The cavalry, the artillery, the Stonewall Brigade, Meems and 
Carson’s Militia, the three brigades of Loring — on wound the sick 
and sluggish column. The hills were now grey glass, and all the horses 
smooth-shod. In advance a corps of pioneers broke with pickaxes 
the solid and treacherous surface, roughening the road so that the 
poor brutes might gain foothold. The vanguard, stumbling around 
a bend of the road, stumbled upon a Federal ambush, horse and foot. 
To either side a wood of cedars blazed and rang. A lieutenant of the 


E52 THE LONG ROLL 


21st Virginia threw up his arms and pitched forward, dead. A pri- 
vate was badly wounded. The company charged, but the blue out- 
posts fired another volley and got away, crashing through the woods 
to some by-road. It was impossible to follow; chase could not be 
given over grey glass. 

With the closing in of the ghostly day, in a stretch of fields beside 
a frozen stream, the column halted. There were no tents, and there 
was scarcely anything to eat. One of the fields was covered by 
stacked corn, and it was discovered that the ear had been left. In 
the driving sleet the men tore apart the shocks and with numbed 
fingers stripped from the grain the sere, rough, and icy husks. They 
and the horses ate the yellow corn. All night, stupid with misery, 
the soldiers dozed and muttered beside the wretched fires. One, a 
lawyer’s clerk, cried like a child, with his hands scored till they bled 
by the frozen corn husks. Down the stream stood a deserted saw- 
mill, and here the Rockbridge men found planks with which they 
made for themselves little pens. The sleet sounded for hours on the 
boards that served for roof, but at last it died away. The exhausted 
army slept, but when in the grey dawn it stirred and rose to the 
wailing of the bugles, it threw off a weight of snow. All the world 
was white again beneath a livid sky. 

This day they made four miles. The grey trees were draped with 
ice, the grey zigzag of the fences was gliding ice under the hands 
that caught at it, the hands of the sick and weak. Motion resolved 
itself into a Dead March; few notes and slow, with rests. The army 
moved and halted, moved and halted with a weird stateliness. 
Couriers came back from the man riding ahead, cadet cap drawn 
over eyes that saw only what a giant and iron race might do under a 
giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson says, “ Press For- 
ward! ”’ General Jackson says,‘‘ Press Forward, men!”’ 

They did not reach Bath that night. They lay down and slept 
behind a screen of hills and awoke in an amethyst dawn to a sky of 
promise. The light, streaming from the east, made glorious the ice- 
laden trees and the far and dazzling wastes of snow. The sunshine 
cheered the troops. Bath was just ahead — Bath and the Yankees! 
The rst Tennessee and the 48th Virginia suddenly swung from the 
main road, and moved across the fields to the ridges overlooking the 
town. Apparently they had gathered their strength into a ball, for 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 1Gy 


they went with energy, double-quickening over the snow. The after- 
noon before Carson and Meems had been detached, disappearing to 
the right. A rumour ran through the ranks. This force would be 
now on the other side of Bath. “It’s like a cup, all of us on the rim, 
and the Yanks at the bottom. If Carson can hold the roads on the 
other side we’ve got them, just like so many coffee grounds! Fif- 
teen hundred of them in blue, and two guns? — Boys, I feel better!” 

Old Jack — the men began with suddenness again to call him 
Old Jack — Old Jack divulged nothing. Information, if inform- 
ation it was, came from scouts, couriers, Ashby’s vedettes, chance- 
met men and women of the region. Something electric flashed from 
van to rear. The line went up the hill with rapidity. When they 
reached the crest the men saw the cavalry far before and below 
them, charging upon the town and shouting. After the horse came a 
body of skirmishers, then, pouring down the hillside the rst Ten- 
nessee and the 48th Virginia, yelling as they ran. From the town 
burst a loud rattle of musketry, and from a height beyond a cannon 
thundered. All the white sides of the cup echoed the sound. 

The infantry swerved to let the artillery by. The guns, grim 
beneath their ice coats, the yelling men, the drivers loudly encourag- 
ing the horses, the horses, red-nostrilled, wide-eyed — all came some- 
how, helter-skelter down the long windings of the ridge. The infan- 
try followed; the town was entered; the Federals retreated, firing as 
they went, streaming out by two roads. One led toward Sir John’s 
Run, the other direct to the Potomac with Hancock on the Mary- 
land shore, and at Hancock General Lander with a considerable 
force. Carson’s men, alack! had found the winter hills no bagatelle. 
They were not in time to secure the roads. 

The Confederate cavalry, dividing, followed, full tilt, the retreat- 
ing foe. A courier brought back to the artillery a curt order from 
Jackson to push on by the Hancock road. As he turned, his mare 
slipped, and the two came crashing down upon the icy road. When 
they had struggled up and out of the way the batteries passed rum- 
bling through the town. Old men and boys were out upon the tram- 
pled sidewalks, and at window and door women and children waved 
handkerchiefs, clapped hands. At a corner, in the middle of the 
street, lay a horse, just lifeless, covered with blood. The sight mad- 
dened the battery horses. They reared and plunged, but at last 


154 THE LONG ROLL 


went trembling by. From the patriarchs and the eager boys came 
information. The Yankees were gone, but not their baggage and 
stores. Everything had been left behind. There were army blankets, 
tents, oilcloths, clothing, shoes, cords of firewood, forage for the 
horses, flour, and fresh meat, sugar, coffee, sutlers’ stores of every 
kind, wines, spirits, cigars — oh, everything! The artillery groaned 
and swore, but obeyed orders. Leaving Capua behind, it strained 
along the Hancock road in the wake of the pursuing cavalry and the 
fleeing Federals. 

The main body of the latter, well in advance and with no ex- 
hausting march behind them to weaken horse and man, reached the 
Potomac by the Hancock road at a point where they had boats 
moored, and got clean away, joining Lander on the Maryland shore. 
The lesser number, making for Sir John’s Run and the Big Cacapon 
and followed by some companies of Ashby’s, did not so quickly 
escape. The Confederate advance came, artillery, horse, and skir- 
mishers, upon the river bank at sunset. All around were great roll- 
ing hills, quite bare of trees and covered with snow, over which the 
setting sun threw a crimson tinge. Below was the river, hoarsely 
murmuring, and immediately upon the other side, the clustering 
Maryland village, with a church spire tall and tapering against the 
northern sky. About the village was another village of tents, and 
upon a hilltop frowned a line of guns. Dusk as it was, the Confeder- 
ate batteries unlimbered, and there opened an artillery duel, shells 
screaming from north to south and south to north across the river 
yet stained with the sunset glow. 

That night the infantry remained at Bath, warmed and com- 
forted by the captured stores. They came like a gift from the gods, 
and as is usual with that gift they disappeared in a twinkling. In the 
afternoon the three arms met on the river bank. The sky was again 
a level grey; it was evident that a snowstorm was brewing. There 
was not a house; except for the fringe along the water’s edge there 
was hardly a tree. The hills were all bare. The snow was packed so 
hard and so mingled with ice that when, in the cannonading, the 
Federal missiles struck and tore it up the fragments were as keen 
and troublesome, almost, as splinters of shell. There was no shelter, 
little wood for burning. The men gazed about them with a frown of 
uneasiness. The storm set in with a whirl of snow and with a wind 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 155 


that raved like a madman and broke the spectral white arms of the 
sycamores by the river. In a short time there was a shifting, won- 
derful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was 
almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, 
ghostly countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo 
and burned every available fence rail. 

In the morning a boat was put across the half-frozen river. It 
bore a summons to Lander to surrender, the alternative being a 
bombardment of the town. “ Retaliation for Shepherdstown ”’ read 
Jackson’s missive. Ashby bore the summons and was led blindfold 
through the streets to headquarters. Lander, looking momently for 
reinforcements from Williamsport, declined to surrender. Ashby 
passed blindfolded out of the town, entered the boat, and came back 
to Stonewall Jackson. The latter waited two hours, then began to 
throw shells into the town. Since early morning a force had been 
engaged in constructing, two miles up the river, a rude bridge by 
which the troops might cross. The evening before there had been 
skirmishes at Sir John’s Run and at the Big Cacapon. A regiment of 
Loring’s destroyed the railroad bridge over the latter stream. The 
Federals withdrew across the river, leaving no command in Mor- 
gan County. 

Throughout the afternoon McLaughlin’s battery dropped shells 
into Hancock, but an hour before dark came orders to cease firing. 
A scout — Allan Gold — brought tidings of heavy reinforcements 
pouring into the town from Williamsport and Hagerstown. So 
heavy were they that Jackson, after standing for five minutes with 
his face to the north, sent orders to discontinue work upon the 
bridge. Romney, when all was said, not Hancock, was his destina- 
tion — Kelly’s eight thousand in Virginia, not Lander’s brigades 
across the line. Doubtless it had been his hope to capture every 
Federal in Bath, to reach and cross the Potomac, inflict damage, and 
retire before those reinforcements could come up. But the infantry 
which he commanded was not yet his “foot cavalry,” and neither 
knew nor trusted him as it was to know and trust. The forces about 
him to-day were not homogeneous. They pulled two ways, they 
were not moulded and coloured as they were to be moulded and 
coloured, not instinct with the one man view as they were to become 
instinct. They were not iron as he was iron, nor yet thunderbolts of 


156 THE LONG ROLL 


war. They could not divine the point and hour of attack, and, sooth 
to say, they received scant assistance from the actual wizard. They 
were patriot forces, simple and manly souls ready enough to die for 
their cause, but few were yet at the arrowhead of concentration as 
was this man. They were to attain it, but not yet. He looked at the 
north and he looked at his complaining legions, and he strode off to 
his bivouac beneath a solitary tree. Here, a little later he gave 
orders to his brigadiers. The Army of the Northwest would re- 
sume the march “at early dawn.” 

In the harsh coldness of the morning they retraced the road to 
Bath, a frightful road, a road over which an army had passed. At 
noon they came to Bath, but there was hardly a pause in the town. 
Beneath a sky of lead, in a harsh and freezing wind, the troops 
swung slowly into a narrow road running west through a meagre 
valley. Low hills were on either side — low and bleak. Scrub oak 
and pine grew sparsely, and along the edges of the road dead milk- 
weed and mullein stood gaunt above the snow. The troops passed 
an old cider press and a cabin or two out of which negroes stared. 

Before long they crossed a creek and began to climb. Ali the 
landscape was now mountainous. To the right, as the way mounted, 
opened a great view, white dales and meadows, far winter forests, — 
and the long, long wall of North Mountain. There was small care 
for the view among the struggling soldiers. The hills seemed per- 
pendicular, the earth treacherous glass. Going up, the artillerymen 
must drag with the horses at gun and caisson; going down the car- 
riages must be held back, else they would slide sideways and go 
crashing over the embankment. Again and again, going down, the 
horses slipped and fell. The weight of metal behind coming upon 
them, the whole slid in a heap to the bottom. There they must be 
gotten to their feet, the poor trembling brutes! and set to the task 
of another hill. The long, grey, halting, stumbling, creeping line 
saw no beauty in the winter woods, in the arched fern over the snow, 
in the vivid, fairy plots of moss, in the smooth, tall ailanthus stems 
by the wayside, in the swinging, leafless lianas of grape, pendent 
from the highest trees, in the imposing view of the mountains. The 
line was sick, sick to the heart, numbed and shivering, full of pain. 
Every ambulance and wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; 
at every infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 57 


travel farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each 
company, were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him 
all the hot sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of 
the companies, their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The 
nature of most was of an abounding cheerfulness, but it was not 
possible to be cheerful on this January road to Romney. 

The army crossed Sleepy Creek. It was frozen to the bottom. 
The cedars along its shore stood so funereally, so crape-like and 
dark, the sycamores were so clay-white and long of arm, the great 
birds slowly circling above a neighbouring wood of so dreary a signi- 
ficance, that the heart sank and sank. Was this war? — war, 
heroic and glorious, with banners, trumpets, and rewarded enter- 
prise ? Manassas had been war — for one brief summer day! But 
ever since there was only marching, tenting, suffering, and fatigue — 
and fatigue — and fatigue. 

Maury Stafford and the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood found them- 
selves riding side by side, with other mounted officers, in advance of 
Loring’s leading regiment. The chaplain had experienced, the day 
before, an ugly fall. His knee was badly wrenched, and so, perforce, 
he rode to-day, though, as often as he thought the grey could stand 
it, he took up a man behind him. Now, however, he was riding 
single. Indeed, for the last mile he had uttered no pitiful comment 
and given no invitation. Moreover, he talked persistently and was 
forever calling his companion’s attention to the beauty of the view. 
At last, after a series of short answers, it occurred to Stafford to 
regard him more closely. There was a colour in the chaplain’s cheek 
and he swayed ever so slightly and rhythmically in his saddle. Staf- 
ford checked his horse, drew his hand out of an ice-caked gauntlet, 
and leaning over laid it on the other’s which was bare. The chap- 
lain’s skin was burning hot. Stafford made a sound of concern and 
rode forward to the colonel. In a minute he returned. ‘‘ Now you 
and I, Mr. Wood, will fall out here and just quietly wait until the 
wagons come by. Then the doctor will fix you up nicely in the ambu- 
lance. . . . Oh, yes, you are! You’re ill enough to want to lie down 
for awhile. Some one else, you know, can ride Pluto.” 

Corbin Wood pondered the matter. ‘‘That’s true, that’s very 
true, my dear Maury. Fontaine, now, behind us in the ranks, his 
shoes are all worn out. Fontaine, eh? Fontaine knows more Greek 


158 _ THE LONG ROLL 


than any man — and he'll be good to Pluto. Pluto’s almost worn 
out himself — he’s not immortal like Xanthius and Balius. Do you 
know, Maury, it’s little wonder that Gulliver found the Houyhnhnms 
so detesting war? Horses have a dreadful lot in war — and the 
quarrel never theirs. Do but look at that stream! — how cool and 
pleasant, winding between the willows —”’ 

Stafford got him to one side of the road, to a small plateau be- 
neath an overhanging bank. The column was now crawling through 
a ravine with a sheer descent on the right to the frozen creek below. 
To the left, covering the mountain-side, were masses of evergreen 
kalmia, and above them tall and leafless trees in whose branches the 
wind made a grating sound. The sleet was falling again — a veil of 
sleet. The two waiting for the ambulance looked down upon the 
grey soldiers, grey, weary, and bent before the wind. “‘ Who would 
ever have thought,” said the chaplain, “that Dante took an idea 
from Virginia in the middle of the nineteenth century? I remember 
things being so happy and comfortable — but it must have been 
long ago. Yes, my people, long ago.’”’ Dropping the bridle, he 
raised his arm in a gesture usual with him in the pulpit. In the fad- 
ing light there was about him an illusion of black and white; he 
moved his arm as though it were clad in the sleeve of a surplice. “I 
am not often denunciatory,” he said, “‘but I denounce this weary 
going to and fro, this turning like a dervish, this finding that every 
straight line is but a fraction of a circle, this squirrel cage with the 
greenwood never reached, this interminable drama, this dance of 
midges, — 

Through a circle that ever returneth in 
To the selfsame spot, 


And much of Madness and more of Sin 
And Horror the soul of the plot — 


Is it not wonderful, the gold light on the mountains ?”’ 

At last the ambulance appeared —a good one, captured at 
Manassas. The chaplain, still talking, was persuaded stiffly to dis- 
mount, to give Pluto’s bridle into Stafford’s hand, and to enter. 
There were other occupants, two rows of them. Stafford saw his old 
friend laid in a corner, on a wisp of straw; then, finding Fontaine in 
the ranks, gave over the grey, and joined the staff creeping, creeping 
on tired horses through the sleet. 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 159 


Cavalry and infantry and wagon train wound at the close of day 
over a vast bare hilltop toward Unger’s Store where, it was known, 
would be the bivouac. The artillery in the rear found it impossible to 
finish out the march. Two miles from Unger’s the halt was ordered. 
It was full dark; neither man nor brute could stumble farther. All 
came to a stand high up on the wind-swept hill. The guns were left in 
the road, the horses led down the slope and picketted in the lee of a 
poor stable, placed there, it seemed, by some pitying chance. In the 
stable there was even found some hay and corn. The men had no 
supper, or only such crumbs as were found in the haversacks. They 
made their fires on the hillside and crouched around them, nodding 
uneasily, trying to sleep with faces scorched by the flame and freez- 
ing backs. They put their feet in the sodden shoes to the fire, and the 
poor, worn-out leather fell into yet greater holes. There was some 
conjecture as to how far the thermometer stood below zero. Some 
put it at forty, but the more conservative declared for twenty. It 
was impossible to sleep, and every one was hungry, and the tobacco 
was all out. What were they doing at home, by the fire, after supper, 
with the children playing about ? 

At dawn the bugles blew. Stiff and sore, racked with pains and 
aches, coughing, limping, savagely hungry, the men rose. Time was 
to come when even a dawn like this would be met by the Confeder- 
ate soldier with whimsical cheer, with greetings as to an oft-encoun- 
tered friend, with a courage quaint, pathetic, and divinely high — 
but the time was not yet. The men swore and groaned. The haver- 
sacks were quite empty; there would be no breakfast until the 
wagons were caught up with at Unger’s. The drivers went down the 
hillside for the horses. When they came to the strength that had 
drawn the guns and looked, there was a moment’s silence. Hetterich 
the blacksmith was with the party, and Hetterich wept. “If I was 
God, I would n’t have it—I would n’t have a horse treated so! 
Just look at Flora — just look at her knees! Ah, the poor brute!”’ 
So frequent had been the falls of the day before, so often had the 
animals been cut by the carriages coming upon them, that many 
were scarred in a dreadful fashion. The knees of Flora had been 
badly cut, and what Hetterich pointed at were long red icicles 
hanging from the wounds. 

At Unger’s the evening before, in a narrow valley between the 


160 THE LONG ROLL 


silver hills, the infantry stacked arms, broke ranks, and listened 
with sullen brows to two pieces of news. At Hanging Rock, be- 
tween Unger’s and Romney, the advance, composed of a regiment of 
militia and a section of artillery, had come into touch with the en- 
emy. The militia had broken, the two guns had been lost. ‘“ Fool 
Tom Jackson ” was reported to have said, “‘ Good! good! ” and lifted 
that right hand of his to the sky. The other tidings were to the effect 
that the troops would rest at Unger’s for three days, to the end, 
chiefly, that the horses might be rough-shod. Rest — delicious 
sound! But Unger’s! To the east the unutterably bleak hills over 
which they had toiled, to the west Capon Mountain high and stark 
against the livid skies, to the south a dark forest with the snow 
beneath the trees, to the north long, low hills, with faded broom- 
sedge waving in the wind. Upon a hilltop perched a country store, a 
blacksmith shop, and one or two farmhouses, forlorn and lonely in 
the twilight, and by the woods ran Buffalo Run,'ice upon the shal- 
lows to either bank. 

In the morning, when the artillery was up, when breakfast was 
over, roll called, orders read, the army fell to the duties upon which 
paramount stress had been laid. All the farriers, the drivers, the 
men who had to do with horses, went to work with these poor, 
wretched, lame, and wounded friends, feeding them, currying them, 
dressing their hurts and, above all, rough-shoeing them in prepara- 
tion for the icy mountains ahead. The clink of iron against iron 
made a pleasant sound; moreover, this morning, the sun shone. 
Very cold as it was, there was cheer in the sky. Even the crows 
cawing above the woods did not sound so dolefully. A Thunder Run 
man found a tree laden with shrivelled persimmons. He was up 
it like a squirrel. “‘Simmon tree! Simmon tree!’’ Comrades came 
hurrying over the snow; the fruit was dropped into upheld caps, 
lifted toward eager mouths. Suddenly there flamed a generous 
impulse. ‘‘Boys! them poor sick fellows with nothing but hard- 
tack —”’ The persimmons were carried to the hospital tents. 

Before the sun was halfway to the meridian a curious spectacle 
appeared along the banks of Buffalo Run. Every hundred feet or 
so was built a large fire. Over it hung a camp kettle, full of water — 
water hot as the fire could make it. Up and down the stream an 
improvised laundry went into operation, while, squad by squad, the 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 161 


men performed their personal ablutions. It was the eighth of Janu- 
ary; they had left Winchester upon the first, and small, indeed, since 
then had been the use of washing water. In the dire cold, with the 
streams frozen, cleanliness had not tempted the majority, and 
indeed, latterly, the men had been too worn out to care. Sleep and 
food and warmth had represented the sum of earthly desire. A num- 
ber, with ostentation, had each morning broken the ice from some 
pool or other and bathed face and hands, but few extended the laved 
area. The General Order appointing a Washerman’s Day came none 
too soon. Up and down Buffalo Run, in the zero weather, the men 
stripped and bathed. Soap was not yet the scarce and valuable com- 
modity it was to become; there was soap enough for all and the camp 
kettles were filled from the stream as soon as emptied. Under- 
clothing, too, flannel and cotton, must be washed. . . . There came 
discoveries, made amid “Ughs!”’ of disgust. The more fastidious 
threw the whole business, undergarment and parasites into the 
fire; others, more reasonable, or without a change of clothing, 
scalded their apparel with anxious care. The episode marked a stage 
in warfare. That night Lieutenant Coffin, writing a letter on his last 
scrap of pale blue paper, sat with scrupulously washed hands well 
back from the board he was using as a table. His boyish face 
flushed, his lips quivered as he wrote. He wrote of lilies and moss 
rose-buds and the purity of women, and he said there was a side of 
war which Walter Scott had never painted. 

Three bleak, pinched days later the army again took the road to 
Romney. Four miles from Unger’s they began to climb Sleepy 
Creek Mountain, mounting the great, sparsely wooded slope like a 
long line of warrior ants. To either hand the view was very fine, 
North Mountain to the left, Capon Mountain to the right, in be- 
tween a sea of hills and long deep vales — very fine and utterly 
unappreciated. The earth was hostile, the sky was hostile, the com- 
manding general was hostile. Snow began to fall. 

Allan Gold, marching with Company A, began to think of Thun- 
der Run, the schoolhouse, and the tollgate. The 65th was now high 
upon the mountain-side and the view had vastly widened. The men 
looked out and over toward the great main Valley of Virginia, 
and they looked wistiully. To many of the men home was over 
there — home, wife, child, mother — all hopelessly out of reach. 


162 THE LONG ROLL 


Allan Gold had no wife nor child nor mother, but he thought of 
Sairy and Tom, and he wondered if Sairy were making ginger- 
bread. He tried to smell it again, and to feel the warmth of her 
kitchen — but then he knew too well that she was not making 
gingerbread! Tom’s last letter had spoken of the growing scarcity; 
flour so high, sugar so high. Everybody was living very plainly, 
and the poor were going to suffer. Allan thought of the school- 
house. It was closed. He could see just how it looked; a small 
unused building, mournful, deserted, crumbling, while past it 
rushed the strong and wintry torrent. He thought suddenly of 
Christianna. He saw her plainly, more plainly than ever he had 
done before. She looked starved, defeated. He thought of the 
Country. How long would the war last? In May they had thought 
“Three months.” In the flush of triumph after Manassas they had 
said “It is over.”” But it wasn’t over. Marching and camping had 
followed, fights on the Peninsula, fights on the Kanawha, at Lees- 
burg, at Cheat Mountain, affairs in the far South; and now Mc- 
Clellan drilling, organizing, organizing below Washington! with 
rumours of another “On to Richmond.” When would the war 
be over? Allan wondered. 

The column, turning to the right, began to descend the mountain, 
a long, slipping, stumbling downward going, with the snow falling 
heavily and the wind screaming like a banshee. At the foot was a 
stretch of bottom land, then, steep and rocky, grimly waiting to be 
crossed, rose Bear Garden Ridge. High Top loomed behind. The 
infantry could see the cavalry, creeping up Bear Garden, moving 
slowly, slowly, bent before the blast, wraithlike through the falling 
snow. From far in the rear, back of the Stonewall Brigade, back of 
Loring, came a dull sound — the artillery and the wagon train 
climbing Sleepy Creek Mountain. It was three o’clock in the after- 
noon — oh, leaden weariness, hunger, cold, sickness, worn-out 
shoes — 

Back upon the mountain top, in the ambulance taken at Manas- 
sas, Mr. Corbin Wood, better than he had been for several days, but 
still feverish, propped himself upon the straw and smiled across at 
Will Cleave, who, half carried by his brother, had appeared beside 
the ambulance an hour before. Swaying as he stood, the boy pro- 
tested to the last that he could march just as well as the other fel- 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 163 


lows, that they would think him a baby, that Richard would ruin his 
reputation, that he was n’t giddy, that the doctor in Winchester had 
told him that after you got well from typhoid fever you were 
stronger than you ever had been before, that Mr. Rat would think 
he was malingering, that — that — that — Richard lifted him into 
the ambulance and laid him upon the straw which several of the 
sick pushed forward and patted into place. The surgeon gave a 
restorative. The elder brother waited until the boy’s eyes opened, 
stooped and kissed him on the forehead, and went away. Now Will 
said that he was rested, and that it was all a fuss about nothing any- 
way, and it was funny, travelling like animals in a circus, and was n’t 
it most feeding time anyway? Corbin Wood had a bit of bread 
which he shared, and two or three convalescents in a corner took up 
the circus idea. “‘ There ain’t going to be another performance this 
year! We’re going into winter quarters — that’s where we’re 
going. Yes, siree, up with the polar bears —” ‘And the living 
skeletons —’”’ “‘Gosh! I’m a warm weather crittur! I’d jest like to 
peacefully fold the equator in my arms an’ go to sleep.” ‘Oh, 
hell! — Beg your pardon, sir, it just slipped out, like one of the 
snake charmer’s rattlers!’”’ “ Boys, jes’ think of a real circus, with 
all the women folk, an’ the tarletan, an’ the spangles, an’ the pink 
lemonade, an’ the little fellers slipping under the ropes, an’ the 
Grand Parade coming in, an’ the big tent so hot everybody’s fan- 
ning with their hats — Oh, Lord!” ‘Yes, and the clown — and the 
ring master—”’ “What d’ye think of our ring master?”’ “Who d’ ye 
mean? Him? Think of him? I think he’s a damned clown! Don’t 
they call him Fool Tom —” 

Will rose from the straw. “While I am by, I’ll allow no man to 
reflect upon the general commanding this army —” 

A Georgian of Loring’s, tall, gaunt, parched, haggard, a college 
man and high private astray from his own brigade, rose to a sitting 
posture. “What in hell is that young cockerel crowing about? Is 
it about the damned individual at the head of this army? I take it 
that it is. Then I will answer him. The individual at the head of 
this army is not a general; he is a schoolmaster. Napoleon, or Cesar, 
or Marlborough, or Eugéne, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or Frederick 
would n’t turn their heads to look at him as they passed! But every 
little school-yard martinet would! He’s a pedagogue — by God, he’s 


164 THE LONG ROLL 


the Falerian pedagogue who sold his pupils to the Romans! Oh, 
the lamb-like pupils, trooping after him through flowers and sunshine 
— straight into the hands of Kelly at Romney, with Rosecrans and 
twenty thousand just beyond! Yaaah! A schoolmaster leading 
Loring and all of us! Let him go back to Lexington and teach the 
Rule of Three, for by God, he’ll never demonstrate the Rule of 
One!” 

He waved a claw-like hand. “Kindly do not interrupt. Stiff, 
fanatic, inhuman, callous, cold, half mad and wholly rash, without 
military capacity, ambitious as Lucifer and absurd as Hudibras — I 
ask again what is this person doing at the head of this army? Has 
any one confidence in him? Has any one pride in him? Has any 
one love for him? In all this frozen waste through which he is 
dragging us, you could n’t find an echo to say ‘One!’ Oh, you 
need n’t shout ‘One!’ You’re not an echo; you’re only a misguided 
V. M. I. cadet! And you don’t count either, chaplain! With all 
respect to you, you’re a non-combatant. And that Valley man 
over there — he does n’t count either. He belongs to the Stonewall 
Brigade. He’s one of Major-General T. J. Jackson’s pet lambs. 
They ’re school-teachers’ favourites. All they’ve got to do is to cheer 
for their master. — Hip, hip, hooray! Here’s Old Jack with his hand 
lifted and his old cap pulled low, and his sabre carried oblikely, and 
his ‘God has been very good to us to-day, men!’ Yaaah — Look 
out! What are you about?” 

The cadet and the Valley man threw themselves across the straw, 
upon the Georgian. Corbin Wood crawled over and separated 
them. “Boys, boys! You’re quarrelling just because you’re sick 
and tired and cold and fretful! Try to be good children. I predict. 
there ’ll come a day when we'll all cheer like mad — our friend from 
Georgia, too — all cheer like mad when General Jackson goes by, 
leading us to victory! Be good now. I was at the circus once, when 
I was a little boy, when the animals got to fighting —”’ 

The way over Bear Garden was steep, the road a mere track 
among boulders. There were many fallen trees. In places they lay 
across the road, abatis thrown there by the storm to be removed by 
half-frozen hands while the horses stood and whinnied. The winter 
day was failing when Stonewall Jackson, Ashby, and a portion of the 
cavalry with the small infantry advance, came down by precipitous 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 165 


paths into Bloomery Gap. Here, in a dim hollow and pass of the 
mountains, beside a shallow, frozen creek, they bivouacked. 

From the other side of Bear Garden, General Loring again sent 
Stafford forward with a statement, couched in terms of courtesy 
three-piled and icy. The aide — a favourite with his general — had 
ventured to demur. ‘“‘I don’t think General Jackson likes me, sir. 
Would not some other —”’ Loring, the Old Blizzard of two years 
later — had sworn. ‘“‘Damn you, Maury, whom does he like? Not 
any one out of the Stonewall Brigade! You’ve got a limberer wit 
than most, and he can’t make you cower — by the Lord, I’ve seen 
him make others do it! You go ahead, and when you’re there talk 
indigo Presbyterian!”’ 

“There” was a space of trampled snow underneath a giant pine. A 
picket on the eastern side of the stream pointed it out, three hundred 
yards away, a dark sentinel towering above the forest. “‘He’s thar. 
His staff’s this side, by the pawpaw bushes.” Stafford crossed the 
stream, shallow and filled with floating ice, climbed the shelving bank, 
and coming to the pawpaw bushes found Richard Cleave stooping 
over the small flame that Tullius had kindled and was watchfully 
feeding with pine cones. Cleave straightened himself. ‘‘Good-even- 
ing, Stafford! Come to my tiny, tiny fire. I can’t give you coffee — 
worse luck! — but Tullius has a couple of sweet potatoes.” 

“T can’t stay, thank you,” said the other. “‘General Jackson is 
over yonder?”’ 

“Yes, by the great pine. I will take you to him.” The two 
stepped from out the ring of pawpaws, Stafford, walking, leading 
his horse. “General Loring complains again?” 

“Has he not reason to?” Stafford looked about him. “Ugh! 
steppes of Russia!”’ 

“You think it a Moscow march? Perhaps it is. But I doubt if 
Ney complained.” 

“You think that we complain too much?” 

“What do you think of it ?” 

Stafford stood still. They were beside a dark line of cedars, skirt- 
ing the forest, stretching toward the great pine. It was twilight; all 
the narrow valley drear and mournful; horses and men like phan- 
toms on the muffled earth. “I think,” said Stafford deliberately, 
“that to a Napoleon General Loring would not complain, nor I bear 


166 THE LONG ROLL 


his message of complaint, but to General Jackson we will, in the 
interests of all, continue to make representations.” 

“Tn the interests of all!’ exclaimed Cleave. “I beg that you will 
qualify that statement. Garnett’s Brigade and Ashby’s Cavalry 
have not complained.” 

“No. Many disagreeable duties are left to the brigades of General 
Loring.” 

“T challenge that statement, sir. It is not true.” 

Stafford laughed. ‘Not true! You will not get us to believe that. 
I think you will find that representations will be forwarded to the 
government at Richmond —”’ 

‘Representations of disaffected soldiers?” 

“No, sir! Representations of gentlemen and patriots. Remon- 
strances of brave men against the leadership of a petty tyrant — a 
diseased mind —a Presbyterian deacon crazed for personal dis- 
tinction —” 

Cleave let his hand fall on the other’s wrist. ‘Stop, sir! You will 
remember that I am of Garnett’s Brigade, and, at present, of Gen- 
eral Jackson’s military family —”’ 

Stafford jerked his wrist away. He breathed hard. All the pent 
weariness, irritation, wrath, of the past most wretched days, all the 
chill discomfort of the hour, the enmity toward Cleave of which he 
was increasingly conscious, the very unsoundness of his position and 
dissatisfaction with his errand, pushed him on. Quarrel was in the 
air. Eight thousand men had, to-day, found their temper on edge. 
It was not surprising that between these two a flame leaped. “‘ Mem- 
ber of Garnett’s Brigade and member of General Jackson’s military 
family to the contrary,” said Stafford, “these are Russian steppes, 
and this is a march from Moscow, and the general in command is no 
Napoleon, but a fool and a pedant —”’ 

“T give you warning!” 

‘““A crazy Barebones masquerading as a Cromwell —”’ 

The other’s two hands on the shoulders of General Loring’s aide 
had undoubtedly — the weight of the body being thrown forward — 
the appearance of an assault. Stafford’s foot slipped upon the freez- 
ing snow. Down he came to the earth, Cleave upon him. A voice 
behind them spoke with a kind of steely curtness, “Stand up, and 
let me see who you are!”’ 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 167 


The two arose and faced Stonewall Jackson. He had come upon 
them silently, out from the screen of blackening cedars. Now he 
blocked their path, his lips iron, his eyes a mere gleaming line. 
‘“ Two squabblers rolling in the snow — two staff officers brawling 
before a disheartened army! What have you to say for yourselves? 
Nothing!” 

Stafford broke the silence. “Major Cleave has my leave to 
explain his action, sir.” 

Jackson’s eyes drew to a yet narrower line. “‘ Your leave is not 
necessary, sir. What was this brawl about, Major Cleave?”’ 

“We quarrelled, sir,” said Cleave slowly. ‘Major Stafford gave 
utterance to certain sentiments with which I did not agree, and 

. we quarrelled.”’ 

‘““What sentiments? Yes, sir, I order you to answer.” 

“Major Stafford made certain statements as to the army and the 
campaign — statements which I begged to contradict. I can say 
no more, sir.” 

“You will tell me what statements, major.”’ 

“It is impossible for me to do that, sir.” 

‘““My orders are always possible of execution, sir. You will 
answer me.”’ 

Cleave kept silence. The twilight settled closer; the dark wall of 
the cedars seemed to advance; a hollow wind blew through the 
forest. “Why, I will tell you, sir!’’ said Stafford impatiently. “I 
said —" 

Jackson cut him short. “Be silent, sir! I have not asked you for 
your report. Major Cleave, I am waiting.”’ 

Cleave made a slight gesture, sullen, weary, and determined. ‘I 
am very sorry, sir. Major Stafford made certain comments which I 
resented. Hence the action of a moment. That is all that I can 
say, sir.” 

Stafford spoke with curt rapidity. ‘“‘I said that these were Rus- 
sian steppes and that this was a march from Moscow, but.that we 
had not a Napoleon to soften privation for us. I said that the 
Stonewall Brigade was unduly favoured, that the general com- 
manding was —”’ 

He got no further. “Silence, sir,” said Jackson, “‘or I will bring 
you before a court martial! You will come with me now to my tent. 


168 THE LONG ROLL 


I will hear General Loring’s Jatest communication there.” He 
turned upon Cleave. ‘‘As for you, sir, you will consider yourself 
under arrest, first for disobedience of orders, second for brawling in 
camp. You will march to-morrow in the rear of your regiment.” 

He towered a moment, then with a jerk of his hand went away, 
taking with him the officer from Loring. Stafford had a moment in 
which to make a gesture of anger and deprecation — a gesture which 
the other acknowledged with a nod; then he was gone, looking back 
once. Cleave returned to Tullius and the small fire by the pawpaw 
bushes. 

An hour later when his regiment came down into Bloomery Gap, 
he found the colonel and made his report. ‘Why, damn it all!” 
said the colonel. ‘‘We were backing you for the brush. Hunting 
weather, and a clean run and all the dogs of war to fawn upon you at 
the end! And here’s a paltry three-foot hedge and a bad tumble! 
Never you mind! You’ll pick yourself up. Old Jack likes you first- 
rate, 

Cleave laughed. ‘‘It does n’t much look like it, sir! Well — I’m 
back with the regiment, anyway!” 

All that night it snowed, snowed hard. When the day broke the 
valley had the seeming of a crowded graveyard — numberless white 
mounds stretching north and south in the feeble light. A bugle 
blew, silver chill; — the men beneath the snow stirred, moaned, 
arose all white. All that day they marched, and at dusk crossed the 
Capon and bivouacked below the shoulder of Sand Mountain. In the 
morning they went up the mountain. The road was deep sand, in- 
tolerably toilsome. The column ascended in long curves, through a 
wood of oak and hickory, with vast tangles of grape hanging from 
the trees. Cavalry, infantry, artillery, wagon train, stragglers, the 
army came slowly, slowly down Sand Mountain, crossed the slender 
levels, and climbed Lovett’s Mountain. Lovett’s was long and 
high, but at last Lovett’s, too, was overpassed. The column crept 
through a ravine with a stream to the left. Grey clifis appeared; 
fern and laurel growing in the clefts. Below lay deep snowdrifts 
with blue shadows. Ahead, overarching the road, appeared a grey 
mass that all but choked the gorge. ‘Hanging Rock!” quoth 
some one. “That’s where the guns were lost!” The army woke 
to interest. “Hanging Rock! ... How’re we going to get by? 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 169 


That ain’t a road, it’s just a cow path! — Powerful good place for 
an ambush —” 

The column passed the rock, and leaving the pass came into open 
country. Before the leading brigade was a creek, an old covered 
bridge now almost burned away, and the charred ruin of ahouse. By 
the roadside lay a dead cow; in the field were others, and buzzards 
were circling above a piece of woods. A little farther a dog — a big, 
brown shepherd — lay in the middle of the road. Its throat had 
been cut. By the blackened chimney, on the stone hearth drifted 
over by the snow, stood a child’s cradle. Nothing living was to be 
seen; all the out-houses of the farm and the barn were burned. 

It was the beginning of a track of desolation. From Hanging 
Rock to Romney the Confederate column traversed a country 
where Kelly’s troops had been before it. To well-nigh all of the grey 
rank and file the vision came with strangeness. They were to grow 
used to such sights, used, used! but now they flamed white with 
wrath, they exclaimed, they stammered. “What! what! Just look 
at that thar tannery! They’ve slit the hides to ribbons! — That po’ 
ole white horse! What’d he done, I wonder? . . . What’s that 
trampled in the mud? That’s a doll baby. O Lord! Pick it up, 
Tom! — Maybe ’t was a mill once, but won’t never any more water 
go over that wheel! . . . Making war on children and doll babies 
and dumb animals and mills!”’ 

Now as hereafter the immediate effect was almost that of warmth 
and rest, food and wine. Suddenly the men began to say, “Old 
Jack. Wait till Old Jack gets there! Just wait till Old Jack and 
us gets there. I reckon there’ll be something doing! There’ll be 
some shooting, I reckon, that ain’t practised on a man’s oxen! — I 
reckon we’d better step up, boys! — Naw, my foot don’t hurt no 
more!” 

A mounted officer came by. “General Jackson says, ‘Press for- 
ward, men!’ ” 

The men did their best. It was very cold, with a high, bitter wind. 
Another low mountain presented itself; the road edged by banks of 
purplish slate, to either hand great stretches of dogwood showing 
scarlet berries, or sumach lifting torches in which colour yet smoul- 
dered. The column came down a steep descent, crossed a creek, and 
saw before it Jersey Mountain. Jersey Mountain proved ghastly; 


170 THE LONG ROLL 


long, high, bare, blown against by all the winds. There had been 
upon Jersey a few cabins, a smithy, a mountain school — now there 
were only blackened chimneys. The men panted as they climbed; 
the wind howled along the crest, the snow began to swirl. At a turn 
of the road where had been a cabin, high upon the bank above the 
men, stood a mountain woman, her linsey skirt wrapped about her 
by the wind, her thick, pale Saxon hair lifted and carried out to its 
full length, her arms raised above her head. ‘Air ye going against 
them? Air ye going against them? The lightning go with ye — 
and the fire go with ye — and the hearts of your mothers go with 
ye! Oh-h! — Oh-h-h-h! — Oh-h! Shoot them down!” - 

It was as though Jersey would never be overpassed. There grew 
before the men’s eyes, upon the treeless plateau which marked the 
summit, a small country church and graveyard. Inexpressibly lonely 
they looked against the stormy sky, lonely and beckoning. From 
company to company ran a statement. ‘When you get to that 
church you’re just three miles from Romney.’”’ Up and up they 
mounted. The cavalry and advance guard, seen for a moment 
against a level horizon, disappeared beyond the church, over the 
brink of the hill. The main column climbed on through the wind 
and the snow; the rear came far behind. The Stonewall Brigade 
led the main body. As it reached the crest of Jersey, a horse and 
rider, a courier of Jackson’s coming from the west, met it, rose in his 
stirrups, and shouted, “The damned vandals have gone! The 
Yankees have gone! They ’ve gotten across the river, away to Cum- 
berland! You were n’t quick enough. General Jackson says, ‘By 
God, you are too slow!’ The courier even in his anger caught him- 
self. ‘J say, ‘By God!’ General Jackson says, ‘You are too slow.’ 
They’ve gone — only Ashby at their heels! They’ve left their 
stores in Romney, but they’ve gone, every devil of them! By God, 
General Jackson says, ‘you should have marched faster!’ ”’ 

He was gone, past the brigade, on to Loring’s with his tidings. 
The Stonewall Brigade left behind the graveyard and the church and 
began the long descent. At first a great flame of anger kept up the 
hearts of the men. But as they marched, as they toiled down 
Jersey, as the realization of the facts pressed upon them, there came 
a change. The enemy had been gone from Bath; the enemy had 
been inaccessible at Hancock; now the enemy was not at Romney. 


FOOL TOM JACKSON 171 


Cumberland! Cumberland was many a wintry mile away, on the 
other side of the Potomac. Here, here on Jersey, there were cold, 
hunger, weariness, sickness, clothing grown ragged, shoes between a 
laugh and a groan, the snow falling, the wind rising, the day declin- 
ing, and misery flapping dark wings above the head of the Army 
of the Northwest! Over the troops flowed, resistless, a wave of re- 
action, nausea, disappointment, melancholy. The step changed. 
Toward the foot of Jersey came another courier. “‘Yes, sir. On 
toward New Creek. General Jackson says, ‘Press forward!’ ” 

The Stonewall Brigade tried to obey, and somewhat dismally 
failed. How could it quicken step again? Night was coming, the 
snow was falling, everybody was sick at heart, hobbling, limping, 
dog-tired. The Close up, men, the Get on, men! of the officers, thin, 
like a child’s fretful wail, was taken up by the wind and lost. With 
Romney well in sight came a third courier. ‘‘ General Jackson says, 
‘Press forward !’— No, sir. He didn’t say anything else. But 
I’ve been speaking with a courier of Ashby’s. He says there are 
three railroad bridges, — one across Patterson’s Creek and two 
across the river. If they were destroyed the enemy’s communica- 
tions would be cut. He thinks we’re headed that way. It’s miles 
the other side of Romney.”’ He passed down the column. “General 
Jackson says, ‘Press forward!’ ”’ 

Press forward — Press forward! It went like the tolling of a 
bell, on and on toward the rear, past the Stonewall Brigade, past the 
artillery, on to Loring yet climbing Jersey. Miles beyond Romney! 
Railroad bridges to cut! — Frozen creeks, frozen rivers, steel in a 
world of snow — Kelly probably already at Cumberland, and Rose- 
crans beyond at Wheeling — hunger, cold, winter in the spurs of the 
Alleghenies, disease, stragglers, weariness, worn-out shoes, broken- 
down horses, disappointment, disillusion, a very, very strange 
commanding general — Suddenly confidence, heretofore a some- 
what limping attendant of the army, vanished quite away. The 
shrill, derisive wind, the grey wraiths of snow, the dusk of the 
mountains took her, conveyed her from sight, and left the Army of 
the Northwest to the task of following without her “Fool Tom 
Jackson.” 


CHAPTER XIV 
THE IRON-CLADS 


Iss Lucy Cary, knitting in hand, stood beside the hearth 
M. and surveyed the large Greenwood parlour. ‘The lining of 
the window curtains,” she said, “‘is good, stout, small 
figured chintz. My mother got it from England. Four windows — 
four yards to a side — say thirty-two yards. That’s enough for a 
dozen good shirts. The damask itself? —I don’t know what use 
they could make of it, but they can surely do something. The net 
curtains will do to stretch over hospital beds. Call one of the boys, 
Julius, and have them all taken down. -— Well, what is it ?” 

“Miss Lucy, chile, when you done sont de curtains ter Richmon’, 
how is you gwine surmantle de windows ?”’ 

“We will leave them bare, Julius. All the more sunlight.” 

Unity came in, knitting. “Aunt Lucy, the velvet piano cover 
could go.” 

“That’s a good idea, dear. A capital blanket!”’ 

‘“‘A soldier won’t mind the embroidery. What is it, Julius?” 

“Miss Unity, when you done sont dat kiver ter Richmon’, what 
you gwine investigate dat piano wif?” 

“Why, we’ll leave it bare, Julius! The grain of the wood shows 
better so.” 

“The bishop,” said Miss Lucy thoughtfully — “the bishop sent 
his study carpet last week. What do you think, Unity?” 

Unity, her head to one side, studied the carpet. “Do you reckon 
they would really sleep under those roses and tulips, Aunt Lucy? 
Just imagine Edward! — But if you think it would do any good —”’ 

“We might wait awhile, seeing that spring is here. If the war 
should last until next winter, of course we shall send it.” 

Unity laughed. “Julius looks ten years younger! Why, Uncle 
Julius, we have bare floors in summer, anyhow!”’ 

“Yaas, Miss Unity,” said Julius solemnly. “An’ on de hottes’ 
day ob July you hab in de back ob yo’ haid dat de cyarpets is super- 


THE IRON-CLADS 173 


imposin’ in de garret, in de cedar closet, ready fer de fust day ob 
November. How you gwine feel when you see November on de 
road, an’ de cedar closet bar ez er bone? Hit ain’ right ter take de 
Greenwood cyarpets an’ curtains, an’ my tablecloths an’ de blan- 
kets an’ sheets an’ Ole Miss’s fringed counterpanes — no’m, hit 
ain’t right eben if de ginerals do sequesterate supplies! How de 
house gwine look when marster come home?” 

Molly entered with her knitting. ‘‘The forsythia is in bloom! 
Aunt Lucy, please show me how to turn this heel. Car’line says 
you told her not to make sugar cakes for Sunday?”’ 

““Ves, dear, I did. I am sorry, for I know that you like them. But 
everything is so hard to get — and the armies — and the poor 
people. I’ve told Car’line to give us no more desserts.” 

“Oh!” cried Molly. “I was n’t complaining! It was Car’line who 
was fussing. I’d give the army every loaf of sugar, and all the flour. 
Is that the way you turn it? 

Rot sat —— et 
The soldiers’ feet to fit!” 


She curled herself up on the long sofa, and her needles went click, 
click! Unity lifted the music from the piano lid, drew off the velvet 
cover, and began to fold it. Muttering and shaking his head, Julius 
left the room. Miss Lucy went over and stood before the portrait of 
her mother. ‘‘ Unity,” she said, “would you send the great coffee 
urn to Richmond for the Gunboat Fair, or would you send lace?” 

Unity pondered the question. “‘The lace would be easier to send, 
but maybe they would rather have the silver. I don’t see who is to 
buy at the Fair — every one is giving. Oh, I wish we had a thou- 
sand gunboats and a hundred Virginias —”’ 

A door banged in the distance and the windows of the parlour rat- 
tled. The room grew darker. ‘‘I knew we should have a storm!” 
said Miss Lucy. “If it lightens, put by your needles.”’ 

Judith came in suddenly. ‘‘ There’s going to be a great storm! 
The wind is blowing the elms almost to the ground! There are black 
clouds in the east. I hope that there are clouds over the ocean, and 
over Chesapeake, and over Hampton Roads — except where the 
Merrimac lies! I hope that there it is still and sunny. Clouds, and 
a wind like a hurricane, a wind that will make high waves and drive 


174. THE LONG ROLL 


the ships — and drive the Monitor! There will be a great storm. If 
the elms break, masts would break, too! Oh, if this night the Fed- 
eral fleet would only go to the bottom of the sea!” 

She crossed the room, opened the French window, and stood, a 
hand on either side of the window frame, facing the darkened sky 
and the wind-tossed oaks. Behind her, in the large old parlour, there 
was an instant’s silence. Molly broke it with a shocked cry, “Ju- 
dith Jacqueline Cary!”’ 

Judith did not answer. She stood with her hair lifted by the wind, 
her hands wide, touching the window sides, her dark eyes upon the 
bending oaks. In the room behind her Miss Lucy spoke. “It is 
they or us, Molly! They or all we love. The sooner they suffer the 
sooner they will let us alone. They have shut up all our ports. God 
forgive me, but I am blithe when I hear of their ships gone down at 
sea!” 

“Yes,” said Judith, without turning. ‘‘ Not stranded as they were 
before Roanoke Island, but wrecked and sunken. Come, look, 
Unity, at the wild storm!” 

Unity came and stood beside her. The oaks outside, like the elms 
at the back of the house, were moving in the blast. Over them hur- 
ried the clouds, black, large, and low. Down the driveway the yel- 
low forsythias, the red pyrus japonicas showed in blurs of colours. 
The lightning flashed, and a long roll of thunder jarred the room. 
“You were the dreamer,” said Unity, ‘‘and you had most of the 
milk of human kindness, and now you have been caught up beyond 
us all!” 

Her sister looked at her, but with a distant gaze. “It is because I 
can dream — no, not dream, see! I follow all the time — I follow 
with my mind the troops upon the march, and the ships on the sea. 
I do not hate the ships — they are beautiful, with the green waves 
about them and the sea-gulls with shining wings. And yet I wish that 
they would sink — down, down quickly, before there was much suf- 
fering, before the men on them had time for thought. They should 
go like a stone to the bottom, without suffering, and they should lie 
there, peacefully, until their spirits are called again. And our ports 
should be open, and less blood would be shed. Less blood, less anger, 
less wretchedness, less pain, less shedding of tears, less watching, 
watching, watching —” 


THE IRON-CLADS 175 


“Look!” cried Unity. “The great oak bough is going!” 

A vast spreading bough, large itself as a tree, snapped by the 
wind from the trunk, came crashing down and out upon the lawn. | 
The thunder rolled again, and large raindrops began to splash on the 
gravel paths. 

“Some one is coming up the drive,” exclaimed Unity. “It’s a 
soldier! He’s singing!” 

The wind, blowing toward the house, brought the air and the 
quality of the voice that sang it. 

“‘Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre, 
Qu’allez-vous faire 
Si loin d’ici ? 
Voyez-vous pas que la nuit est profonde, 


Et que le monde 
N’est que souci ?”’ 


“Edward!” cried Judith. “It is Edward!” 

The Greenwood ladies ran out on the front porch. Around the 
house appeared the dogs, then, in the storm, two or three turbaned 
negresses. Mammy, coifed and kerchiefed, came down the stairs 
and through the house. “O my Lawd! Hit’smy baby! O glory be! 
Singin’ jes’ lak he uster sing, layin’ in my lap — mammy singin’ ter 
him, an’ he singin’ ter mammy! O Marse Jesus! let me look at 
him caer D4 

“Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre, 


Qu’allez-vous faire 
Si loin de nous ? —”’ 


Judith ran down the steps and over the grass, through the storm. 
Beyond the nearer trees, by the great pyrus japonica bush, flame- 
red, she met a ragged spectre, an Orpheus afoot and travel-stained, a 
demigod showing signs of service in the trenches, Edward Cary, in 
short, beautiful still, but gaunt as any wolf. The two embraced; 
they had always been comrades. ‘Edward, Edward —” 

“Eleven months,” said Edward. “Judith, Judith, if you knew 
how good home looks —”’ 

“How thin you are, and brown! And walking! — Where is 
Prince John — and Jeames?”’ 

“Did n’t I tell you in my last letter? Prince John was killed in a 
fight we had on the Warwick River. . . . Jeames is in Richmond 


176 THE LONG ROLL 


down with fever. He cried to come, but the doctor said he must n’t. 
I’ve only three days myself. Furloughs are hard to get, but just 
now the government will do anything for anybody who was on the 
Merrimac — You’re worn yourself, Judith, and your eyes are so big 
and dark! — Is it Maury Stafford or Richard Cleave?” 

Amid the leaping of the dogs they reached the gravelled space 
before the house. Miss Lucy folded her nephew in her arms. ‘‘God 
bless you, Edward —”’ She held him off and looked at him. “I 
never saw it before — but you’re like your grandfather, my dear; 
you’re like my dear father! — O child, how thin you are!” 

Unity and Molly hung upon him. ‘The papers told us that you 
were on the Merrimac— though we don’t know how you got there! 
Did you come from Richmond? Have you seen father ?”’ 

“Yes, for a few moments. He has come up from the south with 
General Lee. General Lee is to be commander of all the forces of 
the Confederacy. Father is well. He sent his dear love to you all. 
I saw Fauquier, too —” 

Mammy met him at the top of the steps. “Oh, my lamb! O 
glory hallelujah! What you doin’ wid dem worn-out close? An’ yo’ 
sh’ut tohn dat-er-way? What dey been doin’ ter you — dat’s what 
I wants ter know? My po’ lamb! — Marse Edward, don’ you laugh 
kaze mammy done fergit you ain’ er baby still —” 

Edward hugged her. ‘‘One night in the trenches, not long ago, I 
swear I heard you singing, mammy! I could n’t sleep. And at last 
I said, ‘Ill put my head in mammy’s lap, and she’ll sing me 


The Buzzards and the Butterflies — 


and I’ll go to sleep.’ I did it, and I went off like a baby — Well, 
Julius, and how are you?” 

Within the parlour there were explanations, ejaculations, ques- 
tions, and answers. “So short a furlough — when we have not seen 
you for almost a year! Never mind — of course, you must get back. 
We'll have a little party for you to-morrow night. Oh, how brown 
you are, and your uniform’s so ragged! Never mind — we’ve got 
a bolt of Confederate cloth and Johnny Bates shall come out 
to-morrow. .. . All well. Knitting and watching, watching and 
knitting. The house has been full of refugees — Fairfaxes and 
Fauntleroys. They’ve gone on to Richmond, and we’re alone just 


THE IRON-CLADS 177 


now. We take turn about at the hospitals in Charlottesville — 
there are three hundred sick — and we look after the servants and 
the place and the poor families whose men are gone, and we read the 
papers over and over, every word — and we learn letters off by 
heart, and we make lint, and we twist and turn and manage, and we 
knit and knit and wait and wait— Here’s Julius with the wine! 
And your room’s ready — fire and hot water, and young Cato to 
take Jeames’s place. Car’line is making sugar cakes, and we shall 
b. have coffee for supper. . . . Hurry down, Edward, Edward darling!” 
a, Edward darling came down clean, faintly perfumed, shaven, thin, 
exforemely handsome and debonair. Supper went off beautifully, 
withthe last of the coffee poured from the urn that had not yet gone 
fo the'.Gunboat Fair, with the Greenwood ladies dressed in the best 
of theirtalast year’s gowns, with flowers in Judith’s hair and at 
Unity’s throat, with a reckless use of candles, with Julius and Tom, 
the dining-“00m boy, duskily smiling in the background, with the 
spring rain b@ting against the panes, with the light-wood burning 
on the hearth’ With Churchill and Cary and Dandridge portraits, 
now in shadow,«2Ow in gleam upon the walls — with all the cheer, 
the light, the grajclous warmth of Home. None of the women spoke 
of how seldom thely burned candles now, of how the coffee had been 
saved against an e™ergency, and of the luxury white bread was 
becoming. They ignared, too, the troubles of the plantation. They 
sould not trouble thei¥ soldier with the growing difficulty of finding 
food for the servants ai%d for the stock, of the plough horses gone, 
and no seed for the sowing, of the problem it was to clothe the men, 
women, and children, with wsnaburgh at thirty-eight cents a yard, 
with the difficulties of healing the sick, medicine having been de- 
clared contraband of war and the home supply failing. They would 
not trouble him with the makeshifts.of women, their forebodings as 
to shoes, as to letter paper, their windings here and there through 
a maze of difficulties strange to them as a Jandscape of the moon. 
They would learn, and it was but little harder than being in the 
field. Not that they thought of it in that light; they thought the 
field as much harder as it was more glorious. Nothing was too good 
for their soldier; they would have starved a week to have given him 
the white bread, the loaf sugar, and the Mocha. 
Supper over, he went down to the house quarter to speak to the 


178 THE LONG ROLL 


men and women there; then, in the parlour, at the piano, he played 
with his masterly touch “The Last Waltz,” and then he came to 
the fire, took his grandfather’s chair, and described to the women 
the battle at sea. 

“We were encamped on the Warwick River — infantry, and a 
cavalry company, and a battalion from New Orleans. Around us 
were green flats, black mud, winding creeks, waterfowl, earthworks, 
and what guns they could give us. At the mouth of the river, across 
the channel, we had sunk twenty canal boats, to the end that Burn... 
side should not get by. Besides the canal boats and the guns a" ng 
the waterfowl there was a deal of fever — malarial — of expos sure, 
of wet, of mouldy bread, of homesickness and general deso's3 tion. 
Some courage existed, too, and singing at times. We h?iq been 
down there a long time among the marshes — all winteyy in fact. 
About two weeks ago —”’ } 

“Oh, Edward, were you very homesick ?”’ 

“Devilish. For the certain production of a very ‘furious feeling, 
give me picket duty on a wet marsh underneath thie stars! Poetic 
places — marshes — with a strong suggestion abgut them of The 
Last Man. .. . Where was I? Down to our Cfamp one morning 
about two weeks ago came El Capitan Colorasgo — General Ma- 
gruder, you know — gold lace, stars, and blagk plume! With him 
came Lieutenant Wood, C.S. N. We were fjaraded —” 

“Edward, try as I may, I cannot get over/the strangeness of your 
being in the ranks!”’ , 

Edward laughed. “There’s many a better man than I in them, 
Aunt Lucy! They make the best of cr'6ws’-nests from which to spy 
on life, and that is what I always wainted to do — to spy on life! — 
The men were paraded, and Lieutenant Wood made us a speech. 
‘The old Merrimac, you know, men, that was burnt last year when 
the Yankees left Norfolk? — well, we’ve raised her, and cut her 
down to her berth deck, and made of her what we call an iron-clad. 
An iron-clad is a new man-of-war that’s going to take the place of the 
old. The Merrimac is not a frigate any longer; she’s the iron-clad 
Virginia, and we rather think she’s going to make her name remem- 
bered. She’s over there at the Gosport Navy Yard, and she’s 
almost ready. She’s covered over with iron plates, and she’s got an 
iron beak, or ram, and she carries ten guns. On the whole, she’s the 


x? 


THE IRON-CLADS 179 


ugliest beauty that you ever saw! She’s almost ready to send to 
Davy Jones’s locker a Yankee ship or two. Commodore Buchanan 
commands her, and you know who he is! She’s got her full quota of 
officers, and, the speaker excepted, they’re as fine a set as you’ll find 
on the high seas! But man-of-war’s men are scarcer, my friends, 
than hen’s teeth! It’s what comes of having no maritime popula- 
tion. Every man Jack that is n’t on our few little ships is in the 
army — and the Virginia wants a crew of three hundred of the 
bravest of the brave! Now, I am talking to Virginians and Louisian- 
ians. Many of you are from New Orleans, and that means that some 
of you may very well have been seamen — seamen at an emergency, 
anyhow! Anyhow, when it comes to an emergency Virginians and 
Louisianians are there to meet it — on sea or on land! Just now 
there is an emergency — the Virginia’s got to have a crew. Gen- 
eral Magruder, for all he’s got only a small force with which to hold 
a long line — General Magruder, like the patriot that he is, has said 
that I may ask this morning for volunteers. Men! any seaman among 
you has the chance to gather laurels from the strangest deck of the 
strangest ship that ever you saw! No fear for the laurels! They’re 
fresh and green even under our belching smokestack. The Merri- 
mac is up like the phoenix; and the last state of her is greater than 
the first, and her name is going down in history! Louisianians and 
Virginians, who volunteers?’ 

“About two hundred volunteered —”’ 

“Edward, what did you know about seamanship?” 

“Precious little. Chiefly, Unity, what you have read to me from 
novels. But the laurels sounded enticing, and I was curious about 
the ship. Well, Wood chose about eighty — all who had been sea- 
men or gunners and a baker’s dozen of ignoramuses beside. I came 
in with that portion of the elect. And off we went, in boats, across 
the James to the southern shore and to the Gosport Navy Yard. 
That was a week before the battle.”’ 

“What does it look like, Edward — the Merrimac?”’ 

“Tt looks, Judith, like Hamlet’s cloud. Sometimes there is an 
appearance of a barn with everything but the roof submerged — or 
of Noah’s Ark, three fourths under water! Sometimes, when the 
flag is flying, she has the air of a piece of earthworks, mysteriously 
floated off into the river. Ordinarily, though, she is rather like a 


180 THE LONG ROLL 


turtle, with a chimney sticking up from her shell. The shell is made 
of pitch pine and oak, and it is covered with two-inch thick plates of 
Tredegar iron. The beak is of cast iron, standing four feet out from 
the bow; that, with the rest of the old berth deck, is just awash. 
Both ends of the shell are rounded for pivot guns. Over the gun 
deck is an iron grating on which you can walk at need. There is the 
pilot-house covered with iron, and there is the smokestack. Below 
are the engines and boilers, condemned after the Merrimac’s last 
cruise, and, since then, lying in the ooze at the bottom of the river. 
They are very wheezy, trembling, poor old men of the sea! It was 
hard work to get the coal for them to eat; it was brought at last 
from away out in Montgomery County, from the Price coal-fields. 
The guns are two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch rifles, and six g-inch 
smoothbores; ten in all. — Yes, call her a turtle, plated with iron; 
she looks as much like that as like anything else. 

“When we eighty men from the Warwick first saw her, she was 
swarming with workmen. They continued to cover her over, and to 
make impossible any drill or exercise upon her. Hammer, hammer 
upon belated plates from the Tredegar! Tinker, tinker with the 
poor old engines! Make shift here and make shift there; work 
through the day and work through the night, for there was a 
rumour abroad that the Ericsson, that we knew was building, was 
coming down the coast! There was no chance to drill, to become 
acquainted with the turtle and her temperament. Her species had 
never gone to war before, and when you looked at her there was 
room for doubt as to how she would behave! Officers and men were 
strange to one another — and the gunners could not try the guns 
for the swarming workmen. There wasn’t so much of the Mont- 
gomery coal that it could be wasted on experiments in firing up — 
and, indeed, it seemed wise not to experiment at all with the ancient 
engines! So we stood about the navy yard, and looked down the 
Elizabeth and across the flats to Hampton Roads, where we could 
see the Cumberland, the Congress, and the Minnesota, Federal 
ships lying off Newport News — and the workmen rivetted the last 
plates — and smoke began to come out of the smokestack — and 
suddenly Commodore Buchanan, with his lieutenants behind him, 
appeared between us and the Merrimac — or the Virginia. Most of 
us still call her the Merrimac. It was the morning of the eighth. 


THE IRON-CLADS 181 


The sun shone brightly and the water was very blue — blue and still. 
There were sea-gulls, I remember, flying overhead, screaming as 
they flew — and the marshes were growing emerald —” 

“Ves, yes! What did Commodore Buchanan want?” 

“Don’t be impatient, Molly! You women don’t in the least look 
like Griseldas! Aunt Lucy has the air of her pioneer great-grand- 
mother who has heard an Indian calling! And as for Judith — 
Judith!” 

“Yes, Edward.” 

“Come back to Greenwood. You looked a listening Jeanne 
d’Arc. What did you hear?” 

“‘T heard the engines working, and the sea fowl screaming, and the 
wind in the rigging of the Cumberland. Go on, Edward.” 

“We soldiers turned seamen came to attention. ‘Get on board, 
men,’ said Commodore Buchanan. ‘We are going out in the Roads 
and introduce a new era.’ So off the workmen came and on we went 
— the flag officers and the lieutenants and the midshipmen and the 
surgeons and the volunteer aides and the men. The engineers were 
already below and the gunners were looking at the guns. The smoke 
rolled up very black, the ropes were cast off, a bugle blew, out 
streamed the stars and bars, all the workmen on the dock swung 
their hats, and down the Elizabeth moved the Merrimac. She moved 
slowly enough with her poor old engines, and she steered badly, and 
she drew twenty-two feet, and she was ugly, ugly, ugly, — poor 
thing! 

“‘ Now we were opposite Craney Island, at the mouth of the Eliza- 
beth. There’s a battery there, you know, part of General Colston’s 
line, and there are forts upon the main along the James. All these 
were now crowded with men, hurrahing, waving their caps... . 
As we passed Craney they were singing ‘Dixie.’ So we came out 
into the James to Hampton Roads. 

“Now all the southern shore from Willoughby’s Spit to Ragged 
Island is as grey as a dove, and all the northern shore from Old 
Point Comfort to Newport News is blue where the enemy has set- 
tled. In between are the shining Roads. Between the Rip Raps and 
Qld Point swung at anchor the Roanoke, the Saint Lawrence, a 
number of gunboats, store ships, and transports, and also a French 
man-of-war. Far and near over the Roads were many small craft. 


182 THE LONG ROLL 


The Minnesota, a large ship, lay halfway between Old Point and 
Newport News. At the latter place there is a large Federal garrison, 
and almost in the shadow of its batteries rode at anchor the frigate 
Congress and the sloop Cumberland. The first had fifty guns, the 
second thirty. The Virginia, or the Merrimac, or the turtle, creeping 
out from the Elizabeth, crept slowly and puffing black smoke into 
the South Channel. The pilot, in his iron-clad pilot-house no bigger 
than a hickory nut, put her head to the northwest. The turtle began 
to swim toward Newport News. 

“Until now not afew of us within her shell, and almost all of 
the soldiers and the forts along the shore, had thought her upon a 
trial trip only, — down the Elizabeth, past Craney Island, turn at 
Sewell’s Point, and back to the dock of the Gosport Navy Yard! 
When she did not turn, the cheering on the shore stopped; you felt the 
breathlessness. When she passed the point and took to the South 
Channel, when her head turned upstream, when she came abreast 
of the Middle Ground, when they saw that the turtle was going to 
fight, from along the shore to Craney and from Sewell’s Point there 
arose a yell. Every man in grey yelled. They swung hat or cap; 
they shouted themselves hoarse. All the flags streamed suddenly 
out, trumpets blared, the sky lifted, and we drank the sunshine in 
like wine; that is, some of us did. To others it came cold like hem- 
lock against the lip. Fear is a horrible sensation. I was dreadfully 
afraid —”’ 


“Edward!” 
“Dreadfully. But you see I did n’t tell any one I was afraid, and 
that makes all the difference! Besides, it wore off. ... It was a 


spring day and high tide, and the Federal works at Newport News 
and the Congress and the Cumberland and the more distant Minne- 
sota all looked asleep in the calm, sweet weather. Washing day it 
was on the Congress, and clothes were drying in the rigging. That 
aspect as of painted ships, painted breastworks, a painted sea-piece, 
lasted until the turtle reached mid-channel. Then the other side 
woke up. Upon the shore appeared a blue swarm — men running to 
and fro. Bugles signalled. A commotion, too, arose upon the Con- 
gress and the Cumberland. Her head toward the latter ship, the 
turtle puffed forth black smoke and wallowed across the channel. 
An uglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the 


THE IRON-CLADS 183 


water, belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, 
unwieldy of management, her bottom scraping every hummock of 
sand in all the shoaly Roads — ah, she was ugly and courageous! 
Our two small gunboats, the Raleigh and the Beaufort, coming 
from Norfolk, now overtook us,— we went on together. I was 
forward with the crew of the 7-inch pivot gun. I could see through 
the port, above the muzzle. Officers and men, we were all cooped 
under the turtle’s shell; in order by the open ports, and the guns all 
ready. . . . We came to within a mile of the Cumberland, tall and 
graceful with her masts and spars and all the blue sky above. She 
looked a swan, and we, the Ugly Duckling. . . . Our ram, you 
know, was under water — seventy feet of the old berth deck, ending 
in a four-foot beak of cast iron. . . . We came nearer. At three 
quarters of a mile, we opened with the bow gun. The Cumberland 
answered, and the Congress, and their gunboats and shore batteries. 
Then began a frightful uproar that shook the marshes and sent the 
sea birds screaming. Smoke arose, and flashing fire, and an excite- 
ment — an excitement — an excitement.— Then it was, ladies, 
that I forgot to be afraid. The turtle swam on, toward the 
Cumberland, swimming as fast as Montgomery coal and the engines 
that had lain at the bottom of the sea could make her go. There was 
a frightful noise within her shell, a humming, a shaking. The Con- 
gress, the gunboats and the shore batteries kept firing broadsides. 
There was an enormous, thundering noise, and the air was grown 
sulphurous cloud. Their shot came pattering like hail, and like hail it 
rebounded from the iron-clad. We passed the Congress — very close 
to her tall side. She gave us a withering fire. We returned it, and 
steered on for the Cumberland. A word ran from end to end of 
the turtle’s shell, ‘We are going to ram her — stand by, men!’ 
“Within easy range we fired the pivot gun. I was of her crew; 
half naked we were, powder-blackened and streaming with sweat. 
The shell she sent burst above the Cumberland’s stern pivot, killing 
or wounding most of her crew that served it... . Wewenton.... 
Through the port I could now see the Cumberland plainly, her star- 
board side just ahead of us, men in the shrouds and running to and 
fro on her deck. When we were all but on her, her starboard blazed. 
That broadside tore up the carriage of our pivot gun, cut another off 
at the trunnions, and the muzzle from a third, riddled the smoke- 


184 THE LONG ROLL 


stack and steam-pipe, carried away an anchor, and killed or wounded 
nineteen men. The Virginia answered with three guns; a cloud of 
smoke came between the iron-clad and the armed sloop; it lifted 
— and we were on her. We struck her under the fore rigging with 
a dull and grinding sound. The iron beak with which we were 
armed was wrested off. 

“ The Virginia shivered, hung a moment, then backed clear of the 
Cumberland, in whose side there was now a ragged and a gaping 
hole. The pilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head up- 
stream. The water was shoal; she had to run up the James some way 
before she could turn and come back to attack the Congress. Her 
keel was in the mud; she was creeping now like a land turtle, and all 
the iron shore was firing at her. . . . She turned at last in freer 
water and came down the Roads. Through the port we could see 
the Cumberland that we had rammed. She had listed to port 
and was sinking. The water had reached her main deck; all her men 
were now on the spar deck, where they yet served the pivot guns. 
She fought to the last. A man of ours, stepping for one moment 
through a port to the outside of the turtle’s shell, was cut in two. 
As the water rose and rose, the sound of her guns was like a lessening 
thunder. One by one they stopped. . . . To the last she flew her 
colours. The Cumberland went down. 

“By now there had joined us the small, small James River squad- 
ron that had been anchored far up the river. The Patrick Henry had 
twelve guns, the Jamestown had two, and the Teaser one. Down 
they scurried like three valiant marsh hens to aid the turtle. With 
the Beaufort and the Raleigh there were five valiant pygmies, and 
they fired at the shore batteries, and the shore batteries answered 
like an angry Jove with solid shot, with shell, with grape, and with 
canister! A shot wrecked the boiler of the Patrick Henry, scalding 
to death the men who were near. . . . The turtle sank a transport 
steamer lying alongside the wharf at Newport News, and then she 
rounded the point and bore down upon the Congress. 

“The frigate had showed discretion, which is the better part of 
valour. Noting how deeply we drew, she had slipped her cables and 
run aground in the shallows where she was safe from the ram of the 
Merrimac. We could get no nearer than two hundred feet. There 
we took up position, and there we began to rake her, the Beaufort, 


THE IRON-CLADS 185 


the Raleigh, and the Jamestown giving us what aid they might. She 
had fifty guns, and there were the heavy shore batteries, and below 
her the Minnesota. This ship, also aground in the Middle Channel, 
now came into action with a roar. A hundred guns were trained 
upon the Merrimac. The iron hail beat down every point, not iron- 
clad, that showed above our shell. The muzzle of two guns were 
shot away, the stanchions, the boat davits, the flagstaff. Again and 
again the flagstaff fell, and again and again we replaced it. At last 
we tied the colours to the smokestack. Beside the nineteen poor 
fellows that the Cumberland’s guns had mowed down, we now had 
other killed and wounded. Commodore Buchanan was badly hurt, 
and the flag lieutenant, Minor. The hundred guns thundered 
against the Merrimac, and the Merrimac thundered against the 
Congress. The tall frigate and her fifty guns wished herself an iron- 
clad; the swan would have blithely changed with the ugly duckling. 
We brought down her mainmast, we disabled her guns, we strewed 
her decks with blood and anguish (war is a wild beast, nothing 
more, and I’ll hail the day when it lies slain). We smashed in her 
sides and we set her afire. She hauled down her colours and ran up a 
white flag. The Merrimac ceased firing and signalled to the Beau- 
fort. The Beaufort ran alongside, and the frigate’s ranking officer 
gave up his coloursand hissword. The Beaufort’s and the Congress’s. 
own boats removed the crew and the wounded. . . . Theshore bat- 
teries, the Minnesota, the picket boat Zouave, kept up a heavy 
firing all the while upon the Merrimac, upon the Raleigh and the 
Jamestown, and also upon the Beaufort. We waited until the crew 
was clear of the Congress, and then we gave her a round of hot 
shot that presently set her afire from stem to stern. This done, we 
turned to other work. 

“The Minnesota lay aground in the North Channel. To her aid 
hurrying up from Old Point came the Roanoke and the Saint Law- 
rence. Our own batteries at Sewell’s Point opened upon these two 
ships as they passed, and they answered with broadsides. We fed 
our engines, and under a billow of black smoke ran down to the 
Minnesota. Like the Congress, she lay upon a sand bar, beyond 
fear of ramming. We could only manceuvre for deep water, near 
enough to her to be deadly. It was now late afternoon. I could see 
through the port of the bow pivot the slant sunlight upon the water, 


186 THE LONG ROLL 


and how the blue of the sky was paling. The Minnesota lay just 
ahead; very tall she looked, another of the Congress breed; the old 
warships singing their death song. As we came on we fired the bow 
gun, then, lying nearer her, began with broadsides. But we could 
not get near enough; she was lifted high upon the sand, the tide was 
going out, and we drew twenty-three feet. We did her great harm, 
but we were not disabling her. An hour passed and the sun drew on 
to setting. The Roanoke turned and went back under the guns of 
Old Point, but the Saint Lawrence remained to thunder at the tur- 
tle’s iron shell. The Merrimac was most unhandy, and on the ebb 
tide there would be shoals enough between us and a berth for the 
night. . . . The Minnesota could not get away, at dawn she would 
be yet aground, and we would then take her for our prize. 
‘Stay till dusk, and the blessed old iron box will ground herself 
where Noah’s flood won’t float her!’ The pilot ruled, and in the gold 
and purple sunset we drew off. As we passed, the Minnesota blazed 
with all her guns; we answered her, and answered, too, the Saint 
Lawrence. The evening star was shining when we anchored off 
Sewell’s Point. The wounded were taken ashore, for we had 
no place for wounded men under the turtle’s shell. Commodore 
Buchanan leaving us, Lieutenant Catesby Ap Rice Jones took 
command. 

“T do not remember what we had for supper. We had not eaten 
since early morning, so we must have had something. But we 
were too tired to think or to reason or to remember. We 
dropped beside our guns and slept, but not for long. Three hours, 
perhaps, we slept, and then a whisper seemed to run through the 
Merrimac. It was as though the iron-clad herself had spoken, 
“Come! watch the Congress die!’ Most of us arose from bes‘de the 
guns and mounted to the iron grating above, to the top of the tur- 
tle’s shell. It was a night as soft as silk; the water smooth, in long, 
faint, olive swells; a half-moon in the sky. There were lights across 
at Old Point, lights on the battery at the Rip Raps, lights in the 
frightened shipping, huddled under the guns of Fortress Monroe, 
lights along either shore. There were lanterns in the rigging of the 
Minnesota where she lay upon the sand bar, and lanterns on the 
Saint Lawrence and the Roanoke. As we looked a small moving 
light, as low as possible to the water, appeared between the Saint 


THE IRON-CLADS 187 


Lawrence and the Minnesota. A man said, ‘What’s that? Must be 
a rowboat.’ Another answered, ‘It’s going too fast for a rowboat 
— funny! right on the water like that!’ ‘A launch, I reckon,’ said a 
third, ‘with plenty of rowers. Now it’s behind the Minnesota.’ — 
‘Shut up, you talkers,’ said a midshipman, ‘I want to look at the 
Congress!’ 

“Four miles away, off Newport News, lay the burning Congress. 
In the still, clear night, she seemed almost at hand. All her masts, 
her spars, and her rigging showed black in the heart of a great ring of 
firelight. Her hull, lifted high by the sand bank which held her, had 
round red eyes. Her ports were windows lit from within. She made a 
vision of beauty and of horror. One by one, as they were reached by 
the flame, her guns exploded — a loud and awful sound in the night 
above the Roads. We stood and watched that sea picture, and we 
watched in silence. We are seeing giant things, and ere this war is 
ended we shall see more. At two o’clock in the morning the fire 
reached her powder magazine. She blew up. A column like the 
Israelite’s Pillar shot to the zenith; there came an earthquake sound, 
sullen and deep; when all cleared there was only her hull upborne 
by the sand and still burning. It burned until the dawn, when it 
smouldered and went out.” 

The narrator arose, walked the length of the parlour, and came 
back to the four women. “Have n’t you had enough for to-night? 
Unity looks sleepy, and Judith’s knitting has lain this half-hour on 
the floor. Judith!” 

Molly spoke. “Judith says that if there is fighting around Rich- 
mond she is going there to the hospitals, to be a nurse. The doctors 
here say that she does better than any one —”’ 

“Go on, Edward,” said Judith. ‘What happened at dawn?” 

“We got the turtle in order, and those ancient mariners, our 
engines, began to work, wheezing and slow. We ran up a new flag- 
staff, and every man stood to the guns, and the Merrimac moved 
from Sewell’s Point, her head turned to the Minnesota, away across, 
grounded on a sand bank in the North Channel. The sky was as 
pink as the inside of a shell, and a thin white mist hung over the 
marshes and the shore and the great stretch of Hampton Roads. It 
was so thin that the masts of the ships huddled below Fortress 
Monroe rose clear of it into the flush of the coming sun. All their 


188 THE LONG ROLL 


pennants were flying — the French man-of-war, and the northern 
ships. At that hour the sea-gulls are abroad, searching for their 
food. They went past the ports, screaming and moving their silver 
wings. 

“The Minnesota grew in size. Every man of us looked eagerly — 
from the pilot-house, from the bow ports, and as we drew parallel 
with her from the ports of the side. We fired the bow gun as we 
came on and the shot told. There was some cheering; the morning 
air was so fine and the prize so sure! The turtle was in spirits — 
poor old turtle with her battered shell and her flag put back as fast 
as it was torn away! Her engines, this morning, were mortal slow 

.and weak; they wheezed and whined, and she drew so deep that, in 
that shoaly water, she went aground twice between Sewell’s Point 
_and the stretch she had now reached of smooth pink water, with the 
sea-gulls dipping between her and the Minnesota. Despite the 
engines she was happy, and the gunners were all ready at the star- 
DOArTa Doris ==" 

Leaning over, he took the poker and stirred the fire. 


“The best laid plans of mice and men 
Do aften gang agley —”’ 


Miss Lucy’s needles clicked. ‘Yes, the papers told us. The 
Ericsson.” 

“There came,” said Edward, “there came from behind the 
Minnesota a cheese-box on a shingle. It had lain there hidden by 
her bulk since midnight. It was its single light that we had watched 
and thought no more of! A cheese-box on a shingle — and _ now it 
darted into the open as though a boy’s arm had sent it! It was little 
beside the Minnesota. It was little even beside the turtle. There 
was a silence when we saw it, a silence of astonishment. It had come 
so quietly upon the scene — a deus ex machina, indeed, dropped 
from the clouds between us and our prey. In a moment we knew it 
for the Ericsson — the looked-for other iron-clad we knew to be 
a-building. The Monitor, they call it. . . . The shingle was just 
awash; the cheese-box turned out to be a revolving turret, mail-clad 
and carrying two large, modern guns — 11-inch. The whole thing 
was armoured, had the best of engines, and drew only twelve feet. 
.. . « Well, the Merrimac had a startled breath, to be sure — there 


THE IRON-CLADS 189 


is no denying the drama of the Monitor’s appearance — and then 
she righted and began firing. She gave to the cheese-box, or to the 
armoured turret, one after the other, three broadsides. The turret 
blazed and answered, and the balls rebounded from each armoured 
champion.” He laughed. “By Heaven! it was like our old favour- 
ites, Ivanhoe and De Bois Guilbert — the ugliest squat gnomes of 
an Ivanhoe and of a Brian de Bois Guilbert that ever came out of a 
nightmare! We thundered in the lists, and then we passed each 
other, turned, and again encountered. Sometimes we were a long 
way apart, and sometimes there was not ten feet of water between 
those sunken decks from which arose the iron shell of the Merrimac 
and the iron turret of the Monitor. She fired every seven minutes; 
we as rapidly as we could load. Now it was the bow gun, now the 
after pivot, now a full broadside. Once or twice we thought her done 
for, but always her turret revolved, and her 11-inch guns opened 
again. In her lighter draught she had a great advantage; she could 
turn and wind where we could not. The Minnesota took a hand, and 
an iron battery from the shore. We were striving to ram the Erics- 
son, but we could not get close to her; our iron beak, too, was stick- 
ing in the side of the sunken Cumberland — we could only ram with 
the blunt prow. The Minnesota, as we passed, gave us all her broad- 
side guns—a tremendous fusillade at point-blank range, which would 
have sunk any ship of the swan breed. The turtle shook off shot and 
shell, grape and canister, and answered with her bow gun. The shell 
which it threw entered the side of the frigate, and, bursting amid- 
ship, exploded a store of powder and set the ship on fire. Leaving 
disaster aboard the Minnesota, we turned and sunk the tugboat 
Dragon. Then came manceuvre and manceuvre to gain position 
where we could ram the Monitor. .. . 

“We got it at last. The engines made an effort like the leap of the 
spirit before expiring. ‘Go ahead! Full speed!’ We went; we bore 
down upon the Monitor, now in deeper water. But at the moment 
that we saw victory she turned. Our bow, lacking the iron beak, 
gave but a glancing stroke. It was heavy as it was; the Monitor 
shook like a man with the ague, but she did not share the fate of the 
Cumberland. There was no ragged hole in her side; her armour was 
good, and held. She backed, gathered herself together, then rushed 
forward, striving to ram us in her turn. But our armour, too, was 


190 THE LONG ROLL 


good, and held. Then she came upon the Merrimac’s quarter, laid 
her bow against the shell, and fired her 11-inch guns twice in succes- 
sion. We were so close, each to’ the other, that it was as though two 
duelists were standing upon the same cloak. Frightful enough was 
the concussion of those guns. 

“That charge drove in the Merrimac’s iron side three inches or 
more. The shots struck above the ports of the after guns, and every 
man at those guns was knocked down by the impact and bled at the 
nose and ears. The Monitor dropped astern, and again we turned 
and tried to ram her. But her far lighter draught put her where we 
could not go; our bow, too, was now twisted and splintered. Our 
powder was getting low. We did not spare it, we could not; we sent 
shot and shell continuously against the Monitor, and she answered in 
kind. Monitor and Merrimac, we went now this way, now that, the 
Ericsson much the lighter and quickest, the Merrimac fettered by her 
poor old engines, and her great length, and her twenty-three feet 
draught. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. . . . The duelists 
stepped from off the cloak, tried operations at a distance, hung for a 
moment in the wind of indecision, then put down the match from 
the gunners’ hands. The Monitor darted from us, her head toward 
the shoal water known as the Middle Ground. She reached it and 
rested triumphant, out of all danger from our ram, and yet where she 
could still protect the Minnesota. . . . A curious silence fell upon 
the Roads; sullen like the hush before a thunderstorm, and yet not 
like that, for we had had the thunderstorm. It was the stillness, per- 
haps, of exhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been 
heavy. The air was filled with smoke; in the water were floating 
spars and wreckage of the ships we had destroyed. The weather was 
sultry and still. The dogged booming of a gun from a shore battery 
sounded lonely and remote as a bell buoy. The tide was falling; 
there were sand-bars enough between us and Sewell’s Point. We 
waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly content with the Middle 
Ground, and would not come back forall our charming. We fired at 
intervals, upon her and upon the Minnesota, but at last our powder 
grew so low that we ceased. The tide continued to fall, and the pilot 
had much to say. . . . The red sun sank in the west; the engineers 
fed the ancient mariners with Montgomery coal; black smoke 
gushed forth and pilots felt their way into the South Channel, and 


THE IRON-CLADS I9¥ 


slowly, slowly back toward Sewell’s Point. The day closed in a 
murky evening with a taste of smoke in the air. In the night-time 
the Monitor went down the Roads to Fortress Monroe, and in the 
morning we took the Merrimac into dry dock at Norfolk. Her 
armour was dented all over, though not pierced. Her bow was bent 
and twisted, the iron beak lost in the side of the Cumberland. Her 
boats were gone, and her smokestack as full of holes as any colan- 
der, and the engines at the last gasp. Several of the guns were in- 
jured, and coal and powder and ammunition all lacked. We put 
her there — the dear and ugly warship, the first of the iron-clads — 
we put her there in dry dock, and there she’s apt to stay for some 
weeks to come. Lieutenant Wood was sent to Richmond with the 
report for the president and the secretary of the navy. He carried, 
too, the flag of the Congress, and I was one of the men detailed for its 
charge. . . . And now I have told you of the Merrimac and the 
Monitor.” 

Rising, he went to the piano, sat down and played “‘ Malbrook s’en 
va-t-en guerre.” Miss Lucy took up her knitting, and knitted very 
rapidly, her eyes now upon her nephew, now upon her father’s por- 
trait. Judith, rising from the old cross-stitch tabouret where she had 
been sitting, laid a fresh log on the fire, then went and stood beside 
the long window, looking out upon the rainy night. 

“What,” asked Edward between two chords, “what do you hear 
from the Valley?” 

Unity answered: “General Banks has crossed the Potomac and 
entered Winchester — poor, poor Winchester! General Jackson 
has n’t quite five thousand men. He has withdrawn toward Wood- 
stock. In spite of that dreadful Romney march, General Johnston 
and the soldiers seem to have confidence in him —” 

Molly came in with her soft little voice. “Major Stafford has 
been transferred. He is with General Ewell on the Rappahannock. 
He writes to Judith every week. They are beautiful letters — they 
make you see everything that is done.”’ 

“What do you hear from Richard Cleave?” 

““He never writes.” 

Judith came back from the window. “It is raining, raining! The 
petals are falling from the pyrus japonica, and all the trees are 
bending! Edward, war is terrible, but it lifts you up. . . .” She 


192 THE LONG ROLL 


locked her hands behind her head. “It lifts you up, out in the 
storm or listening to what the ships have done, or to the stories 
that are told! And then you look at the unploughed land, and you 
wait for the bulletins, and you go to the hospital down there, . . 
and you say,‘ Never—oh, nevermore let us have warl’” 


CHAPTER XV 
KERNSTOWN 


HE brigade was halted before a stretch of forest white with 

dogwood. Ahead began a slow cannonade. Puffs of smoke 

rose above the hill that hid theiron combatants. ‘‘ Ashby’s 
Horse Artillery,” said the men. “That’s the Blakeley now! Boys, IL 
reckon we’re in for it!” 

An aide passed at a gallop. “Shields and nine thousand men. 
Ashby was misinformed — more than we thought — Shields and 
nine thousand men.” 

Along the line the soldiers slightly moved their feet, moistened 
their lips. The 65th occupied a fairy dell where Quaker ladies, blue 
as the heavens, bloomed by every stone. A Federal battery opened 
from a hill to the right. A screaming shell entered the wood, dug 
into earth, and exploded, showering all around with mould. There 
came a great burst of music—the Northern bands playing as 
the regiments deployed. “That ’s ‘Yankee Doodle!’” said the men. 
“Everybody ’s cartridge-box full? Johnny Lemon, don’t you forgit 
to take your ramrod out before you fire!”’ 

The colonel came along the line. “Boys, there is going to be a 
considerable deer drive! — Now, I am going to tell you about this 
quarry. Its name is Banks, and it wants to get across country to 
the Shenandoah, and so out of the Valley to join McClellan. Now 
General Johnston ’s moving from the Rapidan toward Richmond, 
and he does n’t want Banks bothering him. He says, ‘Delay the 
enemy as long as you can.’ Now General Jackson’s undertaken to. 
do it. We’ve got thirty-five hundred men, and that ought to be. 
enough. — Right face! Forward march!” 

As the troops crossed the Valley pike the men hailed it. “Howdy, 
old Road! Pleased to meet you again. Lord! jest as fresh as a daisy 
— jest as though we had n’t tramped them thirty-six miles from 
New Market since yesterday daybreak! My Lord! wish I had your 
staying qualities — Ax re-vo-ree!” 


194 THE LONG ROLL 


Stone fences bordered the pike. The infantry, moving in double 
column, climbed them and entered another strip of springtime 
woods. The artillery — McLaughlin’s, Carpenter’s, and Waters’s 
batteries — found a cross-roads and thundered by, straining to the 
front. Ashby, together with Chew’s battery of horse artillery, kept 
the pike the other side of Kernstown. In front of the infantry 
stretched a great open marshy meadow, utterly without cover. 
Beyond this to the north, rose low hills, and they were crowned with 
Federal batteries, while along the slopes and in the vales between 
showed masses of blue infantry, clearly visible, in imposing strength 
and with bright battle-flags. It was high noon, beneath a brilliant 
sky. There were persistent musicians on the northern side; all the 
blue regiments came into battle to the sound of first-rate military 
bands. The grey listened. ‘‘They sure are fond of ‘Yankee Doodle!’ 
There are three bands playing it at once. . . . There’s the ‘Star 
Spangled Banner’ — 


Oh, say can you see, 
Through the blue shades of evening — 


I used to love it! . . . Good Lord, how long ago!” 

Hairston Breckinridge spoke, walking in front of his company. 
“We're waiting for the artillery to get ahead. We’re going to turn 
the enemy’s right— Shields’s division. Kimball commanding. You see 
that wooded ridge away across there? That’s our objective. That’s 
Pritchard’s Hill, where all the flags are How many men have 
they got? Oh, about nine thousand. — There goes the artillery now 
— there goes Rockbridge! — Yes, sir! — Attention! Fall in!” 

In double column almost the entire fighting force of the Army of 
the Valley crossed the endless open meadow beneath Kimball’s bat- 
teries. That the latter’s range was poor was a piece of golden for- 
tune. The shells crossed to the wood or exploded high in blue air. 
Harmless they might be, but undeniably they were trying. Invol- 
untarily the men stared, fascinated, at each round white cloud above 
them; involuntarily jerked their heads at each rending explosion. 
From a furrowed ridge below the guns, musketry took a hand. The 
Army of the Valley here first met with minie balls. The sound with 
which they came curdled the blood. ‘‘What’s that? What’s that? 
- . . That’ssomething new. The infernal things!” Billy Maydew, 


KERNSTOWN 195 


walking with his eyes on the minies, stumbled over a fairy’s ring and 
came to his knees. Lieutenant Coffin swore at him. “ ! 
Gawking and gaping as though ’t were Christmas and Roman can- 
dles going off! Get up!” Billy arose and marched on. “TI air a-going 
to kill him. Yes, sir; I air a-going to kill him yet.” “Shoo!” said the 
man beside him. “He don’t mean no harm. He’s jest as nervous as 
a two-year filly, and he’s got to take it out on some one! Next ’lec- 
tion of officers he’ll be down and out. — Sho! how them things do 
screech!” 

The meadow closed with a wooded hill. The grey lines, reaching 
shelter, gasped with relief. The way was steep, however, and the 
shells still rained. An oak, struck and split by solid shot, fell across 
the way. A line of ambulances coming somehow upon the hillside 
fared badly. Up the men strained to the top, which proved to be a 
wide level. The Rockbridge battery passed them at a gallop, to be 
greeted by a shell thrown from a thirty-two pounder on the Federal 
right. It struck a wheel horse of one of the howitzers, burst, and 
made fearful havoc. Torn flesh and blood were everywhere; a 
second horse was mangled, only less horribly than the first; the third, 
a strong white mare, was so covered with the blood of her fellows 
and from a wound of her own, that she looked a roan. The driver’s 
spine was crushed, the foot of a gunner was taken off — clean at the 
ankle as by a scythe. The noise was dreadful; the shriek that the 
mare gave echoed through the March woods. The other guns of the 
battery, together with Carpenter’s and Waters’s, swept round the 
ruin and over the high open ground toward a stone wall that ran 
diagonally across. The infantry followed and came out on an old 
field, strewn with rocks and blackberry bushes. In the distance 
stretched another long stone wall. Beyond it, on the gentle slopes, 
were guns enough and blue soldiers enough — blue soldiers, with 
bright flags above them and somewhere still that insistent music. 
They huzzahed when they saw the Confederates, and the Confed- 
erates answered with that strangest battle shout, that wild and 
high and ringing cry called the “rebel yell.” 

In the woods along the ridge and in the old field itself the infantry 
deployed. There were portions of three brigades, — Fulkerson’s, 
Burk’s, and the Stonewall. Fulkerson held the left, Burk with the 
Irish Battalion the right, and Garnett the centre. The position was 








196 THE LONG ROLL 


commanding, the Confederate strength massed before the Federal 
right, Shields’s centre well to the eastward, and his left under Sulli- 
van in the air, on the other side of the pike. It was Stonewall 
Jackson’s desire to turn that right flank, to crumple it back upon the 
centre, and to sweep by on the road to Winchester — the loved 
valley town so near that one might see its bourgeoning trees, hear 
its church bells. 

He rode, on Little Sorrel, up and down the forming lines, and he 
spoke only to give orders, quiet and curt, much in his class-room 
tone. He was all brown like a leaf with Valley dust and sun and 
rain. The old cadet cap was older yet, the ancient boots as gro- 
tesquely large, the curious lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious 
than it had always been. He was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as 
literal, as strict as ever. Moreover, there should have hung about 
him the cloud of disfavour and hostility raised by that icy march to 
Romney less than three months ago. And yet — and yet! What 
had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The return of the 
Stonewall Brigade to Winchester, Loring’s representations, the War 
Department’s interference, and Major-General T. J. jackson’s 
resignation from the service and request to be returned to the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute. General Johnston’s remonstrance, Mr. 
Benjamin’s amende honorable, and the withdrawal of “Old Jack’s”’ 
resignation. There had been some surprise among the men at the 
effect upon themselves of this withdrawal. They had greeted the 
news with hurrahs; they had been all that day in extraordinary 
spirits. Why? To save them they could not have told. He had not 
won any battles. He had been harsh, hostile, pedantic, suspected, 
and detested upon that unutterable Bath and Romney trip. And 
yet — and yet! He was cheered when, at Winchester, it was known 
that the Army of the Valley and not the Virginia Military Institute 
was to have Major-General T. J. Jackson’s services. He was cheered 
when, at short intervals, in the month or two there in camp, he 
reviewed his army. He was cheered when, a month ago, the army 
left Winchester, left the whole-hearted, loving, and loved town to be 
occupied by the enemy, left it and moved southward to New Mar- 
ket! He was cheered loudly when, two days before, had come the 
order to march — to march northward, back along the pike, back 
toward Winchester. 


KERNSTOWN 197 


He was cheered now as he rode quietly to and fro, forming his 
line of battle — Fulkerson’s 23d and 37th Virginia on the left, then 
the 27th supported by the 21st, in the second line the 4th, the 33d, 
the 2d, the 65th, a little back the Irish Battalion, and at the bottom 
of the ridge the 5th, keeping touch with Ashby toward the pike. It 
was two of the afternoon, beautiful and bright. A brigadier, meeting 
him, said, ‘We were not sure, general, that you would fight to-day! 
It is Sunday.” 

The other fastened upon him his steady grey-blue eyes. “The 
God of Battles, sir, as a great general, will understand. I trust 
that every regiment may have service to-morrow in Winchester. 
Advance your skirmishers, and send a regiment to support Car- 
penter’s battery.”’ 

The 27th Virginia, target for a withering artillery fire, crossed the 
open and disappeared in a strip of March wood, high and keen and 
brown against the fleckless sky. Behind it two long grey lines moved 
slowly forward, out now in the old field. The men talked as they 
went. ‘‘Wish there was nice ripe blackberries on these bushes! 
Wish I was a little boy again with a straw hat and a tin bucket, 
gathering blackberries and listenin’ to the June bugs! Zoon — Zoon 
— Zoon! O Lord! listen to that shell! — Sho! that was n’t much. 
I’m getting to kind of like the fuss. There ain’t so many of them 
screeching now, anyhow!” 

A lieutenant raised his voice. “Their fire is slackening. — 
Don’t reckon they’re tired of it, sir? Hope their ammunition’s 
out!” 

From the rear galloped a courier. ‘“‘ Where’s General Jackson? — 
They’re drawing off!—a big body, horse and foot, is backing 
toward Winchester —”’ 

“Glory hallelujah!” said the men. ‘Maybe we won’t have to 
fight on Sunday after all!” 

Out of the March woods ahead broke a thunderclap of sound, 
settling into a roar of musketry. It endured for some minutes, then 
forth from the thickets and shadow of the forest, back from Bar- 
ton’s Woods into the ragged old field, reeled the 27th Virginia. Its 
colonel, Colonel John Echols, was down; badly hurt and half car- 
ried now by his men; there were fifty others, officers and men, 
killed or wounded. The wounded, most of them, were helped back 


198 THE LONG ROLL 


by their comrades. The dead lay where they fell in Barton’s Woods, 
where the arbutus was in bloom and the purple violets. 

The 21st swept forward. The 27th rallied, joined the 21st. The 
two charged the wood that was now filling with clouds of blue skir- 
mishers. Behind came hurrying Garnett with the 2d, the 4th, and 
the 33d. 

Fulkerson on the left, facing Tyler, had two regiments, the 23d 
and 37th Virginia. He deployed his men under cover, but now they 
were out in a great and ragged field, all up and down, with boggy 
hollows, scarred too by rail fences and blurred by low-growing briar 
patches. Diagonally across it, many yards away, ran one of the 
stone fences of the region, a long dike of loosely piled and rounded 
rock. Beyond it the ground kept the same nature, but gradually 
lifted to a fringe of tall trees. Emerging from this wood came now a 
Federal line of battle. It came with pomp and circumstance. The 
sun shone on a thousand bayonets; bright colours tossed in the 
breeze, drums rolled and bugles blew. Kimball, commanding in 
Shields’s absence, had divined the Confederate intention. He knew 
that the man they called Stonewall Jackson meant to turn his right, 
and he began to mass his regiments, and he sent for Sullivan from 
the left. 

The 23d and 37th Virginia eyed the on-coming line and eyed the 
stone fence. “‘That’s good cover!’ quoth a hunter from the hills. 
“We'd a long sight better have it than those fellows! — Sh! the 
colonel’s speaking.” 

Fulkerson’s speech was a shout, for there had arisen a deafening 
noise of artillery. “Run for your lives, men — toward the enemy! 
Forward, and take the stone fence!” 

The two regiments ran, the Federal line of battle ran, the stone 
cover the prize. As they ran the grey threw forward their muskets 
and fired. That volley was at close range, and it was discharged by 
born marksmen. The grey fired again; yet closer. Many a blue sol- 
dier fell; the colour-bearer pitched forward, the line wavered, gave 
back. The charging grey reached and took the wall. It was good 
cover. They knelt behind it, laid their musket barrels along the 
stones, and fired. The blue line withstood that volley, even con- 
tinued its advance, but a second fusillade poured in their very faces 
gave them check at last. In disorder, colours left upon the field, 


KERNSTOWN 199 


they surged back to the wood and to the cover of a fence at right 
angles with that held by the Confederates. Now began upon the left 
the fight of the stone wall — hours of raging battle, of high quarrel 
for this barrier. The regiments composing the grey centre found 
time to cheer for Fulkerson; the rumour of the fight reached the 
right where Ashby’s squadron held the pike. Jackson himself came 
on Little Sorrel, looked at the wall and the line of men, powder 
grimed about the lips, plying the ramrods, shouldering the muskets, 
keeping back Tyler’s regiments, and said ‘‘Good! good!” 

Across a mile of field thundered an artillery duel, loud and pro- 
longed. The blue had many guns; the grey eighteen in action. 
There were indeed but seventeen, for a Tredegar iron gun was dis- 
abled in crossing the meadow. The blue were the stronger cannon, 
modern, powerful. The grey were inferior there; also the grey must 
reach deeper and deeper into caisson and limber chest, must cast 
anxious backward glances toward ordnance wagons growing woefully 
light. The fire of the blue was extremely heavy; the fire of the grey 
as heavy as possible considering the question of ammunition. Rock- 
bridge worked its guns in a narrow clearing dotted with straw stacks. 
A section under Lieutenant Poague was sent at a gallop, half a mile 
forward, to a point that seemed of vantage. Here the unlimbering 
guns found themselves in infantry company, a regiment lying flat, 
awaiting orders. “Hello, 65th!” said the gunners. “ Wish people 
going to church at home could see us!”’ 

A shell fell beside the howitzer and burst with appalling sound. 
The gun was blown from position, and out of the smoke came a 
fearful cry of wounded men. “‘O God!—O God!” The smoke 
cleared. All who had served that gun were down. Their fellows 
about the six-pounder, the other gun of the section, stood stupefied, 
staring, their lips parted, sponge staff or rammer or lanyard idle in 
their hands. A horse came galloping. An aide of Jackson’s — 
Sandy Pendleton it was said — leaped to the ground. He was 
joined by Richard Cleave. The two came through the ring of the 
wounded and laid hold of the howitzer. “Mind the six-pounder, 
Poague! We’ll serve here. Thunder Run men, three of you, come 
here and help!” 7 

They drew the howitzer in position, charged it, and fired. Ina 
very few moments after the horror of the shell, she was steadily 


200 THE LONG ROLL 


sending canister against the great Parrott on the opposite hill. The 
six-pounder beside her worked as steadily. A surgeon came with his 
helpers, gathered up the wounded, and carried them beneath a whis- 
tling storm of shot and shell to a field hospital behind the ridge. 

Out of the woods came fresh regiments of the enemy. These bore 
down upon the guns and upon the 5th Virginia now forming behind 
them. Poague’s section opened with canister at one hundred and 
fifty yards. All the Valley marksmen of the sth let fall the lids of 
their cartridge boxes, lifted their muskets, and fired. The blue with- 
stood the first volley and the second, but at the third they went back 
to the wood. An order arrived from McLaughlin of the Rockbridge, 
“Lieutenant Poague back to the straw stacks!”’ The battery horses, 
quiet and steadfast, were brought from where they had stood and 
cropped the grass, the guns were limbered up, Jackson’s aide and the 
men of the 65th fell back, the six-pounder shared its men with the 
howitzer, off thundered the guns.. There was a stir in the 65th. 
“Boys, I heard say that when those fellows show again, we’re 
going to charge!” 

The battle was now general — Fulkerson on the left behind the 
stone wall, Garnett in the centre, the artillery and Burk with 
three battalions on the right. Against them poured the regiments 
of Kimball and Tyler, with Sullivan coming up. The sun, could it 
have been seen through the rolling smoke, would have showed low in 
the heavens. The musketry was continuous, and the sound of the 
cannon shook the heart of Winchester three miles away. 

The 65th moved forward. Halfway up the slope, its colonel 
received an ugly wound. He staggered and sank. ‘Go on! go on, 
men! Fine hunt! Don’t let the stag —” The 65th went on, led by 
Richard Cleave. 

Before it stretched a long bank of springtime turf, a natural. 
breastwork seized by the blue soldiers as the stone fence on the left 
had been taken by Fulkerson. From behind this now came a line of 
leaping flame. Several of the grey fell, among them the colour- 
bearer. The man nearest snatched the staff. Again the earthwork 
blazed and rang, and again the colour-bearer fell, pitching forward, 
shot through the heart. Billy Maydew caught the colours. ‘Thar’s 
a durned sharpshooter a-settin’ in that thar tree! Dave, you pick 
him off.”’ 


KERNSTOWN 201 


Again the bank blazed. A western regiment was behind it, a 
regiment of hunters and marksmen. Moreover a fresh body of 
troops could be seen through the smoke, hurrying down from the 
tall brown woods. The grey line broke, then rallied and swept on. 
The breastwork was now but a few hundred feet away. A flag 
waved upon it, the staff planted in the soft earth. Billy, moving side 
by side with Allan Gold, clutched closer the great red battle-flag with 
the blue cross. His young face was set, his eyes alight. Iron-sin- 
ewed he ran easily, without panting. “I air a-goin’,’’ he announced, 
“T air a-goin’ to put this here one in the place of that thar one.” 

‘“°T is n’t going to be easy work,”’ said Allan soberly. ‘‘What’s 
the use of ducking, Steve Dagg? Ifa bullet’s going to hit you it’s 
going to hit you, and if it is n’t going to hit you it is n’t —” 

A minie ball cut the staff of the flag in two just above Billy’s head. 
He caught the colours as they came swaying down, Allan jerked a 
musket from a dead man’s grasp, and together he and Billy somehow 
fastened the flag to the bayonet and lifted it high. The line halted 
under a momentary cover, made by the rising side of a hollow 
rimmed by a few young locust trees. Cleave came along it. “Close 
ranks! — Men, all of you! that earthwork must be taken. The 2d, 
the 4th, and the 33d are behind us looking to see us do it. General 
Jackson himself is looking. Attention! Fix bayonets! Forward! 
Charge!” 

Up out of the hollow, and over the field went the 65th in a wild 
charge. The noise of a thousand seas was in the air, and the smoke 
of the bottomless pit. The yellow flashes of the guns came through 
it, and a blur of colour — the flag on the bank. On went their own 
great battle-flag, slanting forward as Billy Maydew ran. The bank 
flamed and roared. A bullet passed through the fleshy part of the 
boy’s arm. He looked sideways at the blood. “‘Those durned bees 
sure do sting! I air a-goin’ to plant this here flag on that thar 
bank, jest the same as if ’t was a hop pole in Christianna’s garden!”’ 

Fulkerson fought on grimly by the stone wall; Garnett and the 
other Stonewall regiments struggled with desperation to hold the 
centre, the artillery thundered from every height.* The 65th touched 
the earthwork. Cleave mounted first; Allan followed, then Billy and 
the Thunder Run men, the regiment pouring after. Hot was the 
welcome they got, and fierce was their answering grip. In places 


202 THE LONG ROLL 


men could load and fire, but bayonet and musket butt did much of 
the work. There was a great clamour, the acrid smell of powder, the 
indescribable taste of battle. The flag was down; the red battle-flag 
with the blue cross in its place. There was a surge of the western 
regiment toward it, a battle around it that strewed the bank and 
the shallow ditch beneath with many a blue figure, many a grey. 
Step by step the grey pushed the blue back, away from the bank, 
back toward the wood arising, shadowy, from a base of eddying 
smoke. 

Out of the smoke, suddenly, came hurrahing. It was deep and 
loud, issuing from many throats. The western regiment began to 
hurrah, too. ‘‘They’re coming to help! They’re coming to help! 
Indiana, ain’t it? — Now, you rebs, you go back onthe other side!” 

The blue wave from the wood came to reinforce the blue wave in 
front. The 65th struggled with thrice its numbers, and there was a 
noise from the wood which portended more. Back, inch by inch, 
gave the grey, fighting desperately. They loaded, fired, loaded, 
fired. They used bayonet and musket stock. The blue fell thick, but 
always others came to take their places. The grey fell, and the ranks 
must close with none to reinforce. In the field to the left the 4th and 
the 33d had their hands very full; the 2d was gone to Fulkerson’s 
support, the 5th and the 42d were not yet up. Out of the wood came a 
third huzzahing blue line. Cleave, hatless, bleeding from a bayonet 
thrust in the arm, ordered the retreat. 

On the crest of ‘the bank there was confusion and clamour, shots 
and shouts, the groans of the fallen, a horrible uproar. Out of the 
storm came a high voice, “It air a-goin’ to stay, and I air a-goin’ 
_ to stay with it!” 

Billy Maydew had the flag. He stood defiant, half enveloped in 
its folds, his torn shirt showing throat and breast, his young head 
thrown back against the red ground. “I ain’t a-goin’ to quit — I 
ain’t a-goin’ to quit! Thunder Run and Thunder Mountain hear me 
what I am a-sayin’! I ain’t a-goin’ to quit!” 

Allan Gold laid hold of him. “Why, Billy, we’re coming back! 
There’s got to bea lot of times like this in a big war! You come on 
and carry the colours out safe. You don’t want those fellows to take 
them!” 

Billy chanted on, “TI ain’t a-goin’ to quit! I put it here jest like I 


KERNSTOWN 203 


was putting a hop pole i in Christianna’ s garden, and I ain’t a-goin’ 
to dig it up again — 

Dave appeared. “Billy boy, don’t be such a damned fool! You 
jest skeedaddle with the rest of us and take it out of them next time. 
Don’t ye want to see Christianna again, an’ maw an’ the dogs? — 
Thar, now!” 

A bullet split the standard, another — a spent ball coming from 
the hillside — struck the bearer in the chest. Billy came to his 
knees, the great crimson folds about him. Cleave appeared in the 
red-lit murk. “Pick him up, Allan, and bring him away.” 

It was almost dusk to the green and rolling world about the field 
of Kernstown. Upon that field, beneath the sulphurous battle cloud, 
it was dusk indeed. The fighting line was everywhere, and for the 
Confederates there were no reinforcements. Fulkerson yet held the 
left, Garnett with conspicuous gallantry the centre with the Stone- 
wall regiments. The batteries yet thundered upon the right. But 
ammunition was low, and for three hours Ashby’s mistake as to the 
enemy’s numbers had received full demonstration. Shields’s briga- 
diers did well and the blue soldiers did well. 

A body of troops coming from the wood and crowding through a 
gap in a stone fence descended upon the Rockbridge battery. Four 
regiments of the Stonewall brigade clung desperately to the great 
uneven field which marked the centre. The musket barrels were 
burningly hot to the touch of the men, their fingers must grope for 
the cartridges rattling in the cartridge boxes, their weariness was 
horrible, their eyes were glazed, their lips baked with thirst. Long 
ago they had fought in a great, bright, glaring daytime; then again, 
long ago, they had begun to fight in a period of dusk, an age of dusk. 
The men loaded, fired, loaded, rammed, fired quite automatically. 
They had been doing this fora long, long time. Probably they would 
do it for a long time to come. Only the cartridges were not auto- 
matically supplied. It even seemed that they might one day come 
toanend. The dusk deepened. They had, beneath the red-lit battle 
clouds, a glimpse of Garnett, a general chivalric and loved, standing 
in his stirrups, looking out and upward toward the dark wood and 
Sullivan’s fresh regiments. 

A sergeant came along the line stretching a haversack open with 
his hands. In it were cartridges. “‘I gathered all the dead had. 


204 THE LONG. ROLL 


’T isn’t many. You’ve got to shoot to kill, boys!” A man witha 
ball through the end of his spine, lying not far from a hollow of the 
earth, half pool, half bog, began to cry aloud in an agonizing fashion, 
‘“Water! water! Oh, some one give me water! Water! For the love 
of God, water!”’ A grey soldier started out of line toward him; in a 
second both were killed. Garnett settled down in his saddle and 
came back to the irregular, smoke-wreathed, swaying line. He spoke 
to his colonels. ‘‘There are three thousand fresh bayonets at the 
back of these woods. General Jackson does not wish a massacre. I 
will withdraw the brigade.”’ | 

The troops were ready to go. They had held the centre very long; 
the cartridges were all but spent, the loss was heavy, they were 
deadly tired. They wanted water to drink and to hear the com- 
mand, Break ranks! Garnett was gallant and brave; they saw that 
he did what he did with reason, and their judgment acquiesced. 
There was momently a fresh foe. Without much alignment, fighting 
in squads or singly, firing as they went from thicket and hollow at 
the heavy on-coming masses, the Stonewall Brigade fell back upon 
the wood to the south. The blue wave saw victory and burst into 
a shout of triumph. Kimball’s batteries, too, began a jubilant 
thunder. 

Over the field, from Fulkerson on the left to the broken centre 
and the withdrawing troops came a raw-bone sorrel urged to a furi- 
ous gallop; upon it a figure all dusk in the dusk, a Cromwell- 
Quixote of a man, angered now to a degree, with an eye like steel 
and a voice like ice. He rode up to Garnett, as though he would ride 
him down. ‘‘General Garnett, what are you doing? Go back at 
once, sir!”’ 

As he spoke he threw himself from the saddle and closed his 
gauntleted hand with force on the arm of a drummer boy. “Beat 
the rally!” he commanded. 

The rapid and continuous rolling filled like a sound of the sea the 
ears of the Stonewall Brigade. Garnett, in a strange voice, gave 
the counter-order. The men uttered a hard and painful gasp. 
They looked and saw Stonewall Jackson lifted above them, an 
iron figure in a storm of shot and shell. He jerked his hand into the 
air; he shouted, ‘Back, men! Give them the bayonet!” The drum 
beat on, Colonels and captains and lieutenants strove to aid him 


KERNSTOWN 205 


and to change the retreat into an advance. In vain! the commands 
were shattered; the fighting line all broken and dispersed. The men 
did not shamefully flee; they retreated sullenly, staying here and 
there where there were yet cartridges, to fire upon the on-coming 
foe, but they continued to go back. 

The sth and the 42d with Funsten’s small cavalry command came 
hastening to the broken centre and there made a desperate fight. 
The 5th Virginia and the 5th Ohio clanged shields. The 84th 
Pennsylvania broke twice, rallied twice, finally gave way. Two In- 
diana regiments came up; the 5th Virginia was flanked; other blue 
reinforcements poured in. The last grey commands gave way. Ful- 
kerson, too, on the left, his right now uncovered, must leave his stone 
fence and save his men as best he might. Rockbridge and Carpenter 
and Waters no longer thundered from the heights. The grey infan- 
try, wildly scattered, came in a slow surge back through the woods 
where dead men lay among the spring flowers, and down the ridge 
and through the fields, grey and dank in the March twilight, toward 
the Valley pike. Night and the lost battle weighed upon the army. 
The shadowy ambulances, the lights of the gatherers of the wounded 
flitting few and far over the smoke-clouded field, made for a ghastly 
depression. Sick at heart, in a daze of weariness, hunger and thirst, 
drunk with sleep, mad for rest, command by command stumbled 
down the pike or through the fields to where, several miles to the 
south, stretched the meadows where their trains were parked. There 
was no pursuit. Woods and fields were rough and pathless; it was 
now dark night, and Ashby held the pike above. 

A camp-fire was built for Stonewall Jackson in a field to the right 
of the road, three miles from Kernstown. Here he stood, summoned 
Garnett, and put him under arrest. The army understood next day 
that heavy charges would be preferred against this general. 

To right and left of the pike camp-fires flamed in the windy night. 
Passing one of these, Richard Cleave cut short some bewailing on the 
part of the ring about it. ‘“‘Don’t be so downcast, people! Some- 
times a defeat in one place equals a victory in another. I don’t 
believe that General Banks will join General McClellan just now. 
Indeed, it’s not impossible that McClellan will have to part with 
another division. Their government’s dreadfully uneasy about 
Washington and the road to Washington. They didn’t beat us 


206 THE LONG ROLL 


easily, and if we can lead them up and down this Valley fora 
while — I imagine that’s what General Johnston wants, and what 
General Jackson will procure. — And now you’d better all go to 
sleep.” 

“Where are you going, Cleave?”’ 

“To see about the colonel. They’ve just brought him to the 
farmhouse yonder. Dr. McGuire says he will get well — dear old 
Brooke!”’ 

He went, striding over the furrowed field past groups of men 
sleeping and moaning as they slept. The stars were very bright in 
the clear, cold, windy night. He looked at them and thought of the 
battle and of the dead and the wounded, and of Judith and of his 
mother and sister, and of Will in the 2d, and of to-morrow’s move- 
ments, and of Stonewall Jackson. A dark figure came wandering up 
to him. It proved to be that of an old negro. ‘“Marster, is you seen 
Marse Charlie?” 

“ Marse Charlie whom, uncle?” 

““Marse Charlie Armetage, sah, mah young marster. I ’spec you 
done seed him? I ’spec he come marchin’ wif you down de pike f’om 
dat damn battlefield? I sure would be ’bleeged ef you could tell me, 
sah.” 

“T wish I could,” said Cleave, with gentleness. ‘I have n’t seen 
him, but maybe some one else has.”’ 

The old negro drew one hand through the other. ‘‘I’s asked erbout 
fifty gent’men. . . . Reckon Marse Charlie so damn tired he jes’ 
lain down somewhere an’ gone ter sleep. Reckon he come down 
de pike in de mahnin’, shoutin’ fer Daniel. Don’ you reckon so, 
marster?”’ 

“Tt’s not impossible, Daniel. Maybe you’ll find him yet.” 

“T specs ter,” said Daniel. ‘I ’spec ter fin’ him howsomever he’s 
a-lyin’.”’ He wandered off in the darkness, and Cleave heard him 
speaking to a picket, “‘ Marster, is you seen Marse Charlie?’ 


CHAPTER x v1 


RUDE’S HILL 


came, the second day after Kernstown, to the gorge of Cedar 
Creek. A bridge had once been here; there remained the 
blackened cross-timbers and a portion of the flooring. The water 
below was cold, deep, and rapid. Rather than breast it, the army 
made shift to cross on the charred wood. An infantry command, 
stepping gingerly, heard behind it shots and shouts —a Federal 
cavalry charge upon the rear guard. Several of the men, listening 
too absorbedly, or not content with the present snail-like motion, 
suddenly left the timbers and entered the rough and swollen creek 
that poured beneath. Their exclamations in this berth were pite- 
ous, and their comrades fished them out with bayonets and laughter. 
Upon the night of the 26th Banks’s troopers occupied the north- 
ern shore of Tom’s Brook. Ashby held the southern side, and held 
it fast. Behind that safe and vigilant and valiant screen the Army 
of the Valley moved quietly and in good spirits to the points its 
general had in mind. The army never knew what were these 
points until it found itself actually upon the ground. It is morally 
certain that had he lived, a recalcitrant, in former days, no amount 
of peine forte et dure would have opened the lips of Stonewall Jack- 
son had he willed to keep them closed. During their earlier acquaint- 
ance officers and men alike had made many an ingenious endeavour 
to learn the plans they thought they ought to know. They set 
quaint traps, they made innocent-seeming remarks, they guided 
right, they guided left, they blazed beautiful trails straight, they 
thought, to the moment of revelation. It never came. He walked 
past and around and over their traps. Inquisitive officers found 
themselves not only without a straw of information, but under dis- 
pleasure. Brilliant leading remarks shone a moment by their own 
brilliancy, then went out. The troops conjectured one road — they 
went by another; natives described the beauties of the village before 


Gane, the JACKSON and his army in slow retreat up the valley 


208 THE LONG ROLL 


which they were sure to break ranks — at eve they experienced the 
hospitalities of quite another town. Generals in the ranks demon- 
strated that they were going to turn on Shields, or that they were 
going east by the cld Manassas Gap and whip Geary, or northeast 
and whip Abercrombie. They did none of the three. They marched 
on up the valley to Rude’s Hill near Mount Jackson. About this 
time, or a little later, men and officers gave it up, began to admire, 
and to follow blindly. A sergeant, one evening, put it to his mess. 
“Tf we don’t know, then Banks and Shields and Frémont and Milroy 
and McClellan and Lincoln and Stanton don’t know, either!’’ The 
mess grew thoughtful; presently it took the pipe from its mouth to 
answer, ‘‘Dog-gone it, Martin, that’s true! Never saw it just that 
way before.” 

Rude’s Hill formed a strong natural position. There was water, 
there were woods, there was an excellent space for a drill-ground. 
Jackson’s directions as to drill-grounds were always characteristic- 
ally explicit. “Major: You will see that a camp is chosen where there 
are wood, water, and a drill-ground —”’ emphasis on the drill-ground. 
At Rude’s Hill they drilled and drilled and drilled. Every morning 
rang out adjutant’s call, every morning there were infantry evolu- 
tions, artillery evolutions. The artillery had some respite, for, turn 
by turn, the sections went forward ten miles to do picket duty for 
Ashby, Chew’s Horse Artillery being continually engaged with the 
Federal outposts. But the infantry drilled on, drilled and wondered 
at Banks. One week — two weeks! — and the general in blue with 
nineteen thousand men still on the farther side of Tom’s Brook! 

Despite the drilling the Army of the Valley had a good time at 
Rude’s Hill. Below brawled the Shenandoah, just to the east 
sprang the Massanuttens. There was much rain, but, day by day, 
through the silver veil or the shattered golden light, lovelier and 
more lovely grew the spring. The army liked to see her coming. In 
its heart it felt a springtime, too; a gush of hope and ardour. The 
men hardly counted Kernstown a defeat. It was known that Old 
Jack had said to one of the aides, “I may say that I am satisfied, 
sir.” And Congress had thanked the Army of the Valley. And all 
the newspapers sang its praises. The battle of Pea Ridge in Arkan- 
sas, the shelling of Newbern in North Carolina, the exploits of the 
Merrimac in Hampton Roads, the battle of Kernstown in the Val- 


RUDE’S HILL 209 


ley — so at the moment ran the newspapers. And day by day 
recruits were coming in; comrades as well who had been in hospital 
or home on furlough. In that fortnight the Army of the Valley 
grew to number nearly six thousand men. 

At Rude’s Hill there was an election of company officers. The 
proceedings — amazing enough to the professional soldier — put 
into camp life three days of excitement and salt. Given a people of 
strong political proclivities suddenly turned soldier; given human 
grudges and likings, admirations and contempts; given the ballot in 
military as in civil life; given a chance to inject champagne into the 
ennui of camp existence, and in lieu of gun practice to send off sky- 
rockets and catherine wheels; given a warm personal interest in 
each private’s bosom as to whom, for the next twelfth month (if 
the war lasted that long), he was going to obey —and there resulted 
a shattering of monotony comparable to a pitched battle. 

The elections were held in beautiful, vernal groves. That there 
would be changes it was believed; change was in the air! For days 
beforehand the character for conduct, courage, and general agree- 
ableness of every man who wore three bars on his collar, or two, 
or one, or who carried chevrons of silk or chevrons of worsted, had 
been strictly in the zone of fire. Certain officers nearing certain 
camp-fires felt caucuses dissolving at their approach into an inno- 
cence of debating societies engaged with Fabius Maximus or Scipio 
Africanus. Certain sergeants and corporals dreamed bars instead 
of chevrons, and certain high privates, conscious of merit, saw 
worsted chevrons, silk chevrons, and gold bars all in one blissful 
night. 

But when election day dawned bright and clear, with a fine 
chorus of birds and an especial performance by the regimental 
bands, when roll call was over, and camp duties were over, and 
morning drill was over (no relaxation here! There was only one day 
in the week on which Old Jack let up on drill, and that was n’t elec- 
tion day!) and the pickets had reluctantly marched away, leaving 
their votes behind them, and a section of artillery had gone off, 
swearing, to relieve Chew, and the men could at last get down to 
work, to happy babbling, happy speechifying, happy minding the 
polls, and when in the cool of the afternoon the returns were an- 
nounced, there were fewer changes than had been predicted. After 


210 THE LONG ROLL 


all, most of the officers were satisfactory; why let them down with a 
jolt? And the privates were satisfactory, too. Why take a capital 
comrade, a good cook and forager and story-teller, and make him 
uncomfortable by turning him into an officer? He was nice enough 
as he was. Not that there were no alterations. Several companies 
had new captains, some lieutenants stepped down, and there was a 
shifting of non-commissioned officers. In Company A of the 65th 
Lieutenant Mathew Coffin lost out. The men wished to put up 
Allan Gold for the lieutenancy, but Allan declined. He had rather, 
he said, be scout than lieutenant — and what was the use in chang- 
ing, anyhow? Lieutenant Coffin was all right. Had n’t he been as 
brave as a lion at Kernstown — and any man is liable to lose his 
temper at times — and would n’t we hate him to have to write back 
to that young lady at home —? The last plea almost settled it, for 
the Confederate heart might be trusted to melt at the mention 
of any young lady at home. But all the Thunder Run men were 
against Coffin, and Thunder Run turned the scale. In the main, 
however, throughout the army, company officers were retained, and 
retained because they were efficient. The election was first-rate fun, 
and the men cheered the returns, then listened to the orders of the 
evening from the same old bars and chevrons. The sun went down 
on a veritable love feast — special rations, special music, special 
fires, and, between supper and tattoo, an entertainment in each 
regiment. 

The 65th had a beautiful programme, its debating and literary 
societies, its glee clubs, chess and checker circles, old sledge associa- 
tions, Thespians and Greek Letter men all joining forces. The stage 
was a piece of earth, purple brown with pine needles. Two huge 
fires, one at either side, made a strong, copper-red illumination. 
The soldier audience sat in a deep semicircle, and sat at ease, being 
accustomed by now to the posture of tailor or Turk. Only recruits 
sought logs or stones upon which to sit. Tobacco smoke rose like 
incense. 

The chief musician “‘sounded on the bugle horn.”’? The Glee Club 
of Company C filed on the stage with three banjos and two guitars, 
bowed elegantly, and sang the “Bonny Blue Flag.” The applause 
was thunderous. A large bearded man in the front row lifted a voice 
that boomed like one of Ashby’s cannon. “Encore! Encore!” 


RUDE’S HILL 211 


Company C sang “Listen to the Mocking Bird.” The audience 
gently sighed, took the pipe from its lips, and joined in — 
“Listen to the mocking bird — Listen to the mocking bird. . 
The mocking bird still singing o’er her grave. 


Listen to the mocking bird — Listen to the mocking bird. ... 
Still singing where the weeping willows wave.” 


The pine trees took it up, and the hazel copses and the hurrying 
Shenandoah. 


““T was in the mild September — September — September, 
And the mocking bird was singing far and wide.” 


“Far and wide. . . . That’s grand, but it sure is gloomy. 
Next!” The chief musician, having a carrying voice, made an- 
nouncements. “‘No. 2. Debate. Which will first recognize the 
Confederacy, England or France? With the historic reasons for 
poth doing so. England, Sergeant Smith. France, Sergeant Duval. 
— The audience is not expected to participate in the debate other- 
wise than judicially, at the close.”’ 

The close saw it decided by a rising vote that England would come 
first — Sergeant Smith, indeed, who chanced to be a professor of 
belles-lettres at a great school, having declared, with the gesture of 
Saint John on Patmos, that he saw approaching our shores a white 
winged ship bearing her declaration of amity. ‘‘ No. 3,” intoned the 
first musician. “Recitation by Private Edwin Horsemanden.” 

Private Edwin Horsemanden gave the title of his selection, a 
poetic selection. Some of his fellow privates looked puzzled. “ “Oz 
Etaliahn ?’— What does ‘Oz Etaliahn’ mean? Cherokee or 
Choctaw, which? Explain it to us, Eddy. Is it something to eat — 
or to drink? ‘’T is true, ’tis pity, ’tis pity ’tis ’t is true’ — but 
most of us never went to college! . . . Oh, an opera house! — In 
Paris, do you say? Go on, Eddy, go on!” 


“At Paris it was, at the opera there, — 
And she looked like a queen in a book that night —”’ 


‘Never saw one out of a book, did you? . . . Yes, I saw a gypsy 
queen once. . . . And the queen of the circus. . . . There’s a man 
in Company D once saw the queen of England, saw her just as 
plain! She was wearing a scoop bonnet with pink roses around her 
face. . . . Sh! Shh!” 


212 THE. LONG ROLL 
“Of all the operas that Verdi wrote.”’ 
‘““Who’s Verdi ?”’ 


“The best, to my taste, is the ‘Trovatore.’ ” 


““Trovatore?’ Eddy, isn’t that the serenading fellow who goes on 
singing till they hang him? Oh, Lord, yes! And the anvil chorus! 
The anvil chorus comes in there. Go on, Eddy. We feel perfectly 
at home.” 

“And Mario” 


“Hm! stumped again.” 


“can sooth with a tenor note 
The souls in Purgatory.” 


The large bearded man was up once more. “I rise to object. 
There is n’t any such place. The com — commanding general’ll 
put him in irons for misrepresenting the sidereal system. There’s 
only heaven, hell, and the enemy. — Yaaaath, Yaa. . . . Yaaat, 
yaaaah, yaaaaih! Certainly, sergeant. The pleasure is mine, sir. 
Don’t mention it, I beg. Mum’s the word!”’ 


“The moon on the tower slept soft as snow ” — 


“‘Gee-whiz! what a snowball! Did n’t the tower break down? 
No! You amaze me. Go on, Eddy, go on. We know the natural 
feelings of a sophomore.” 

‘And who was not thrilled in the strangest way 
As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low, 
‘Non ti scordar di me?’”’ 

“What’s that ? Wait a minute, Eddy! Let’s get the words. I al- 

ways did want a chance at German. — Now you say them slowly 


and we’ll repeat. . . . Why, man alive, you ought to be proud of 
your linguistic accomplishments! . . . Well, I’ll begin, and we’ll 
fire by platoons. 


‘“Non ti scordar di me? —”’ 


“Attention! Company A!” 


“Non ti scordar di me? — 
Non ti scordar di me ?”’ 


RUDE’S HILL 213 


“Very good! We’ll get the meaning after we learn the words. 
Company B!” 


“‘Non ti scordar di me?”’ 


“Well roared, Bottom! Company C!”’ 


““Non ti scordar di me ?”’ 


“Took out, or General Banks’ll be sending over Tom’s Brook 
to know what’s the matter! Company D!” 


“Non ti scordar di me ?”’ 
‘““Company D goes to the head of the class! Company E!”’ 


“‘Non ti scordar di me ?”’ 


“Ware pine cones! Company E’s shaking them down. . . . This 
class’s getting too big. Let’s all learn the words together, so’s 
Private Horsemanden can go on with his piece! Attention, 65th! 
Make ready! Take aim! Fire!”’ 


““NON TI SCORDAR DI ME?” 


“Now Eddy. . . . Oh, yes, you go on! You aren’t going to 
cheat us that way. We want to know what happened when they 
stopped talking German! Has n’t anything happened yet.” 


-aNOn AN 


“Sh! Go on, Eddy boy, and tell us exactly what occurred.” 

Private Edwin Horsemanden had pluck as well as sentiment, and 
he went on. Moreover he had his revenge, for at bottom the 65th 
was itself tender-hearted, not to say sentimental. It believed in lost 
loves and lost blossoms, muslin dresses, and golden chains, cypress 
shades and jasmine flowers, 


“‘And the one bird singing alone to his nest, 
And the one star over the tower.” 


The 65th sighed and propped its chin on its hand. Presently the 
65th grew misty-eyed. 


“Then I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower 
She used to wear in her breast 
It smelt so faint and it smelt so sweet. —”’ 


214 THE LONG ROLL 


The pipe dropped from the 65th’s hand. It sat sorry and 
pleased. Private Edwin Horsemanden went on without interruption 
and finished with éclat. The chief musician cleared his throat. 
“The Glee Club of Company H will now —”’ 

The Glee Club of Company H was a large and popular organiza- 
tion. It took the stage amid applause. The leader bowed. ‘‘Gentle- 
men, we thank you. Gentlemen, you have just listened to a beau- 
tiful novelty —a pretty little foreign song bird brought by the 
trade-wind, an English nightingale singing in Virginian forests. — 
Gentlemen, the Glee Club of Company H will give you what by now 
is devil a bit of a novelty — what promises to be as old as the hills 
before we have done with it — what our grandchildren’s grand- 
children may sing with pride — what to the end of time will carry 
with it a breath of our armies. Gentlemen, the Glee Club of Com- 
pany H gives you the Marseillaise of the South. Altention!”’ 


“Way down South in the land of cotton, 
ad 
’*Simmon seed and sandy bottom —” 


The 65th rose to its feet. Its neighbour to the right was the 2d 
Virginia, encamped in a great open field; to the left the 5th, occupy- 
ing a grove of oaks. These regiments were busied with their own 
genial hour, but when the loudly sung air streamed across from the 
65th they suspended their work in hand. They also sung “ Dixie.” 
Thence it was taken up by the 4th and the 33d, and then it spread to 
Burk and Fulkerson. The batteries held the top of Rude’s Hill, up 
among the night wind and the stars. The artillerymen took the air 
from the infantry. Headquarters was situated on the green bank of 
the Shenandoah. Staff and couriers and orderlies hummed or sang. 
Stonewall Jackson came to the door of his tent and stood, looking 
out. All Rude’s Hill throbbed to “Dixie.” 

On went the programme. “ Marco Bozzaris”’ was well spoken. 
A blacksmith and a mule driver wrestled for a prize. ‘‘ Marmion 
Quitting the Douglas’s Hall’ was followed by “Lula, Lula, Lula 
is Gone,” and “Lula” by “Lorena,” and “Lorena” by a fencing 
match. The Thespians played capitally an act from “The Rivals,” 
and a man who had seen Macready gave Hamlet’s Soliloquy. Then 
they sang a song lately written by James Randall and already very 
popular, — 


b 


RUDE’S HILL 215 


“‘T hear the distant thunder hum, 
Maryland! 
The Old Line bugle, fife and drum —” 


An orderly from headquarters found Richard Cleave. ‘General 
Jackson wishes to see you, sir.”’ 

The general’s tent was not large. There were a table and two 
stools, on one of which sat Jackson in his characteristic position, 
large feet accurately paralleled. On the table, beside the candle, lay 
three books — the Bible, a dictionary, and ‘‘ Napoleon’s Maxims.” 
‘ackson was writing, his hand travelling slowly across a sheet of 
dim blue, lined, official paper. The door flap of the tent was fas- 
tened back. Cleave, standing in the opening, saluted. 

“Take a seat, sir,” said the general, and went on to the end of his 
page. Having here signed his name, he dropped the quill and 
slightly turned so as to face the waiting officer. From under his high 
bronzed forehead his blue eyes looked quietly upon Cleave. 

The younger man returned the gaze as quietly. This was the first 
time he had been thus summoned since that unlucky winter evening 
at Bloomery Gap. He remembered that evening, and he did not 
suppose that his general had forgotten it. He did not suppose that 
Jackson forgot anything. But apparently it was no longer to be 
counted against him. Jackson’s face wore the quiet, friendly, some- 
what sweet expression usual to it when all was calm within. As for 
Cleave himself, his nature owned a certain primal flow and bigness. 
There were few fixed and rigid barriers. Injured pride and resent- 
ment did not lift themselves into reefs against which the mind must 
break in torment. Rather, his being swept fluid, making no great 
account of obstacles, accepting all turns of affairs, drawing them 
into its main current, and moving onward toward some goal, hardly 
self-conjectured, but simple, humane, and universal. The anger he 
might have felt at Bloomery Gap had long passed away. He sat 
now attentive, collected, broad-browed, and quiet. 

“Major Cleave,” said Jackson, “you will take an orderly with 
you and ride across the mountains. General Ewell is at Gordons- 
ville with a somewhat larger force than my own. You will take this 
letter to him,” he folded it as he spoke, “‘and you will talk to him 
as one intelligent man to another.” 

“Do you mean, sir, that I am to answer his questions?’”’ 


216 THE LONG ROLL 


“Yes, sir. To the best of your ability. There is impending a 
junction between General Ewell and myself. He wishes to know 
many things, and seems to think it natural that I should tell him 
them. Iam nota great letter writer. You will give him all the inform- 
ation that is common to the army.” 

Cleave smiled. ‘‘That, sir, is not a great deal.” 

“Perhaps it is not, sir. You are at liberty to give to General 
Ewell your own observations and expectations. You will, however, 
represent them as your own.” 

‘“‘May I ask, sir, when this junction is to occur?” 

“T have not decided, sir.” 

“Does General Ewell know when it will occur?” 

“Not precisely. He will be told in good time.” 

“Whether, when you move, you move north or west or south or 
east, is, I suppose, sir, purely a matter of conjecture?”’ 

* Purely, sit.” 

“But the morale of the army, its efficiency and spirit, may be 
freely praised and imparted ?” 

“Yes, sir, freely. Upon your return I shall want from you your 
impression of General Ewell and the troops he commands.”’ He 
drew toward him a map which lay on the table. ‘You will ride 
through Massanutton Gap by Conrad’s Store and Swift Run Gap. 
Thence you will make a détour to Charlottesville. There are stores 
there that I wish reported upon and sent on to Major Harman at 
Staunton. You will spend one day upon that business, then go on to 
Ewell.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH 


HE hospital at Charlottesville, unlovely and lovely, ghastly 

and vital, brutal, spiritual, a hell of pain and weakness, an- 

other region of endeavour and helpfulness, a place of hor- 
ror, and also of strange smiling, even of faint laughter, a country 
as chill as death and as warm as love — the hospital at Charlottes- 
ville saw the weary morning grow to weary noon, the weary noon 
change toward the weary latter day. The women who nursed the 
soldiers said that it was lovely outside, and that all the peach trees 
were in bloom. ‘We'll raise you a little higher,” they said, “and 
you can see for yourself. And look! here is your broth, so good and 
strengthening! And did you hear? We won on the Peninsula to- 
day!” 

At four o’clock Judith Cary gave to another her place beside a 
typhoid pallet and came out into the emerald and rose, the freshness 
and fragrance of the spring. The Greenwood carriage was waiting. 
“We'll go, Isham,” said Judith, “by the University for Miss Lucy.” 

Isham held open the door. ‘No’m, Miss Judith. Miss Lucy done 
sont wuhd dat de ladies’ll be cuttin’ out nuniforms clean ’twel 
dark. She say don’ wait fer her — Mrs. Carter’ll bring her home.” 

Judith entered the carriage. An old acquaintance, passing, 
paused to speak to her. ‘“‘Isn’t there a greater stir than usual ?”’ 
she asked. 

“‘Some of General Ewell’s men are over from Gordonsville. There 
goes General Dick Taylor now — the one in grey and white! He’s 
a son, you know, of Zachary — Old Rough and Ready. General 
Jackson, too, has an officer here to-day, checking the stores that 
came from Richmond. — How is it at the hospital ?” 

“Tt is very bad,”’ said Judith. “When the bands begin to play I 
laugh and cry like all the rest, and I wave and clap my hands, and I 
would fight on and on like the rest of you, and I do not see that, 
given people as they are, the war could have been avoided, and I 


218 THE LONG ROLL 


would die to win, and I am, I hope, a patriot — and yet I do not see 
any sense in it! It hurts me as I think it may hurt the earth. She 
would like, I believe, something better than being a battlefield. — 
There is music again! Yesterday a man died, crying for the band to 
hush. He said it drowned something he needed to hear.” 

“Yes, yes,” replied her friend, nodding his head. ‘‘That is per- 
fectly true. That is very true, indeed! — That band’s coming from 
the station. They’re looking for a regiment from Richmond. — 
That’s a good band! What are they playing —?” 

“ Bright flowers spring from the hero’s grave, 
The craven knows no rest, — 


Thrice cursed the traitor and the knave, 
The hero thrice is blessed —”’ 


The Greenwood carriage rolled out of the town into the April 
country. The fruit trees were in bloom, the woods feathering green, 
the quiet and the golden light inestimable after the moaning wards. 
The carriage went slowly, for the roads were heavy; moreover the 
former carriage horses were gone to the war. These were two from 
‘the farm, somewhat old and stiff, willing, but plodders. They went 
half asleep in the soft sunshine, and Isham on the box went half 
asleep too. Judith would have been willing to sleep, but she could 
not. She sat with her gaze upon the fair spring woods and the 
amethystine hills rising to blue skies. The carriage stopped. Isham 
bent down from the box. “Miss Judith, honey, er gent’man’s on de 
road behin’ us, ridin’ ter overtek de kerridge.” 

“Wait for him, then,” said Judith. “There is some message, 
perhaps.” 

While they waited she sat with folded hands, her eyes upon the 
purple hills, her thoughts away from Albemarle. The sound that 
Isham made of surprise and satisfaction did not reach her. Until 
she saw Cleave’s face at the window she thought him somewhere in 
the Valley — fighting, fighting! in battle and danger, perhaps, that 
very day. 

Her eyes widened, her face had the hush of dawn; it was turned 
toward him, but she sat perfectly still, without speaking. Only the 
door was between them, the glass down. He rested his clasped 
hands on the ledge, and his dark, moved face looked in upon her. 
“Judith,” he said, “I did not know. — I thought it was one of the 
others. . . . I hope that you are a little glad to see me.” 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH 219 


Judith looked at him a moment longer, then swayed a little for- 
ward. She bent her head. Her cheek touched his clasped hands, he 
felt her kiss upon them, and her forehead resting there. 

There was a moment’s silence, deep, breathless, then Cleave 
spoke. “Judith .. . Am I mad?” 

“T believe that you love me,” she said. “If you do not, it does 
not matter. . . . I have loved you for two years.” 

“Maury Stafford ?”’ 

“T have never believed that you understood — though what it 
was that made you misunderstand I have never guessed. . . . There 
is no Maury Stafford. There never was.” 

He opened the door. ‘‘Come out,” he said. ‘Come out with me 
into the light. Send the carriage on.” 

She did so. The road was quiet, deserted, a wide bright path 
between the evening hills. Dundee following them, they walked a 
little way until they came to a great rock, sunk in the velvet sward 
that edged a wood. Here they sat down, the gold light bathing 
them, behind them fairy vistas, fountains of living green, stars of the 
dogwood and purple sprays of Judas tree. ‘‘How I misunderstood 
is no matter now,” said Cleave. “I love you, and you say that you 
love me. Thank God for it!” 

They sat with clasped hands, their cheeks touching, their breath 
mingling. “Judith, Judith, how lovely are you! I have seen you 
always, always! . . . Only I called it ‘vision,’ ‘ideal.’ At the top of 
every deed I have seen your eyes; from the height of every thought 
you have beckoned further! Now — now — It is like a wonderful 
home-coming . . . and yet you are still there, above the mountains, 
beckoning, drawing — There and here, here in my arms! .. . Ju- 
dith — What does ‘Judith’ mean?” 

“Tt means ‘praised.’ Oh, Richard, I heard that you were wounded 


at Kernstown!”’ 


“Tt was nothing. It is healed. . . . I will write to your father 
atonce. 
“He will be glad, I think. He likes you. . . . Have you a fur- 


lough? How long can you stay?”’ 
“Love, I cannot stay at all. Iam on el Jackson’s errand. 
I must ride on to Gordonsville — It would be sweet to stay!” 
‘When will you come again?” 


220 THE LONG ROLL 


“T do not know. There will be battles— many battles, perhaps— 
up and down the Valley. Every man is needed. I am not willing to 
ask even a short furlough.”’ 

“JT am not willing that you should. . . . I know that you are in 
danger every day! I hear it in the wind, I see it in every waving 
bough. . . . Oh, come back to me, Richard!” _ 

‘“‘T?”? he answered, ‘‘I feel immortal. I will come back.” 

They rose from the rock. “The sun is setting. Would you rather 
I went on to the house? I must turn at once, but I could speak to 
them — 

“No. Aunt Lucy is in town, Unity, too. . . . Let’s say ones 
before we reach the carriage.” 

They went slowly by the quiet road beneath the flowering trees. 
The light was now only on the hilltops; the birds were silent; only | 
the frogs in the lush meadows kept up their quiring, a sound quaintly 
mournful, weirdly charming. A bend of the road showed them 
Isham, the farm horses, and the great old carriage waiting beneath a 
tulip tree. The lovers stopped, took hands, moved nearer each to the 
other, rested each in the other’s arms. Her head was thrown back, 
his lips touched her hair, her forehead, her lips. ‘‘Good-bye, good- 
bye, good-bye!” 

He put her in the carriage, kissed her hands as they lay on the 
door ledge; and stood back. It was not far to the Greenwood gates; 
the old, slow horses moved on, the carriage rounded a leafy turn, the 
road was left to the soldier and his horse. 

- Cleave rode to Gordonsville that night as though he carried 
Haven with him. The road was fair, the moon was high. Far-flung, 
beautiful odours filled the air; the red ploughed earth sent its share, 
the flowering fruit trees fetes! the flowers in the wood, the mint by 
the stream. A light wind swung them as from a censer; the moved 
air touched the young man’s forehead. He took off his hat; he rode 
rapidly with head held high. He rode for hours, Dundee taking 
the way with even power, a magnificently silent friend. Behind, on 
an iron grey, came the orderly. Riding thus together, away from 
organization and discipline, the relations between the two men, 
officer and private, were perfectly democratic. From Rude’s Hill 
across the Massanuttons and from Swift Run Gap to Charlottes- 
ville they had been simply comrades and fellow Virginians. They 


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were from adjoining counties, where the one had practised law and 
the other had driven a stage. There were differences in breeding, 
education, and employment; but around these, recognized by both, 
stretched the enormous plane of humanity. They met there in 
simple brotherliness. To-night, however, Cleave had spoken for 
silence. “‘I want to be quiet for a while, Harris.— There is some- 
thing I have to think of.” 

The night was all too short for what he had to think of. The pink 
flush of dawn, the distant view of Ewell’s tents, came too soon. It 
was hard to lower the height and swell of the mind, to push back the 
surging thoughts, to leave the lift and wonder, the moonlight, and 
the flowering way. Here, however, were the pickets; and while he 
waited for the corporal of the guard, standing with Harris on a little 
hill, before them the pink sky, below them a peach orchard, pink 
too, with a lace-like mist wreathing the trees, he put golden after- 
noon and moonlight night in the bottom of his heart and laid duty 
atop. 

Ewell’s camp, spread over the rolling hills and lighted by a splen- 
did sunrise, lay imposingly. To the eyes of the men from the Valley 
the ordered white tents of Trimble’s and Taylor’s and the Mary- 
land line had an air luxuriously martial. Everything seemed to 
gleam and shine. The guns of the parked batteries gave back the 
light, the colours seemed silken and fine, the very sunrise gun had a 
sonorousness lacking to Chew’s Blakeley, or to McLaughlin’s six- 
pounders, and the bugles blowing reveille a silvery quality most 
remarkable. As for the smoke from the camp-fires — “Lord save 
us!”’ said Harris, “I believe they ’re broiling partridges! Of all the 
dandy places!” 

Cleave laughed. “It’s not that they are so fine, but that we are 
so weather-beaten and rusty! They’re only in good working-day 
trim. We'll have to polish up at Rude’s Hill.” 

“This is the rst Maryland on the hillside,” said the guide the 
corporal had given; “‘ there with the blue flag. Mighty fine feathers, 
but I reckon they’re gamecocks all right! Elzey’s Brigade’s over 
beside the woods — Virginian to the backbone. Trimble’s got a 
fine lot — Georgians and Alabamians and Mississippians. Here 
come some of the 2d Virginia Cavalry! Ain’t they pretty?” 

They were. But Harris stood up for the absent Valley. “Huh! 


222 THE LONG ROLL 


Ashby’s good enough for me! Ashby’s got three stallions — the 
white he’s fondest of, and a black like a piece of coal, and a red 
yoan —”’ 

The guide nodded energetically. “Oh, we think a heap of Ashby 
ourselves! There ain’t anybody that the men listen about more 
eagerly. We ain’t setting up on this side of the mountains to beat 
him! But I reckon the 2d and the 6th’il do right well when they 
get a chance. Yes, sir, General Taylor’s Brigade. He’s got a lot 
of Frenchmen from Louisiana — Acadians I’ve heard them called 
— and they can’t speak a word of English, poor souls! — There goes 
their band again. They’re always playing, dancing, and cooking rice. 
We call them Parlavoos — name of their county, I reckon. — He’s 
got Wheat’s Battalion, too. Sorrow a bit of a Frenchman there — 
they’re Irish Tartars! — That’s headquarters, sir. By the apple 
orchard.” 

An aide brought Cleave to a fair-sized central tent, set beside a 
great wine sap just coming into bloom. Around it was a space of 
trodden earth, to one side a cheerful fire and a darky cook, in front 
a pine table, over which a coloured boy was spreading a very clean 
tablecloth. Out of the tent came a high, piping voice. ‘‘Good- 
morning, Hamilton! What is it? What is it? — An officer from 
General Jackson? All right! All right! glad to see him. Tell him 
to wait — Jim, you black idiot, what have I done with that button? ”’ 

The aide smiled, Cleave smiled. There was something in the 
voice that announced the person, quaintly rough, lovable and 
gallant, —“‘ dear Dick Ewell.” He came out presently, a small man 
with a round bald head, hook nose and bright eyes. 

“This the officer? Glad to see you, Major — Major Cleave? 
Stay to breakfast. Bob, you black rascal, another plate! Can’t 
give you much, — mysterious inward complaint, myself, — can’t 
eat anything but frumenty. — Well, sir, how is General Jackson?”’ 

“Quite well, general.”’ 

“Most remarkable man! Wants to tie a bandage round every- 
body’s eyes but his own!’’ —all this plaintively treble. ‘Would 
ask to have it off if I was facing a firing party, and in the present 
circumstances don’t like it at all! — Did you happen to meet any 
of my couriers?” 

“Yes, general. One at the foot of the Massanuttons, one in Elk 
Run Valley.” 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH 229 


“Got tosend them. Got to ask what to do. By God, out on the 
plains with fifty dragoons I’d know! And here President Davis 
has made me a major-general, and I don’t know! — Draw up to 
the table, sir, draw up! You can drink coffee; I can’t. Can’t sleep 
at night; don’t want to lie down; curl up on the ground and think 
of my fifty dragoons. — Well, sir, and what does General Jackson 
say?” 

“T have a letter for you, sir.” 

He presented it. Ewell, head on one side like a bird, took and 
opened the paper. “TI really do believe the sun’s up at last! What 
does he say? ‘Move in three days by Stanardsville. Take a week’s 
rations. Rest on Sunday. Other directions will be given as needed.’ 
Hm! Highly characteristic! Never anything more than a damned 
dark lantern! — Well, it’s something to know that we’re going by 
Stanardsville and are to rest on Sunday! Where is Stanardsville?”’ 

“Tt is a few miles this side of Swift Run Gap.” 

The general helped his guest to cornbread and himself began 
upon frumenty. “All right! I’ll move, and I suppose when I get 
there old Jackson ’ll vouchsafe another gleam. — Bob, you damned 
Ethiopian, where are your wits? Fill Major Cleave’s cup. — Glad 
to welcome you, major, to Camp Ewell. Pretty tidy place, don’t 
you think ?” 

“T do indeed, sir.”’ 

“Have you seen Dick Taylor’s beauties — his Creoles and Tigers 
and Harry Hayes, 7th Louisiana? The Maryland Line, too, and 
Trimble and Elzey? Damned fine army! How about yours over 
there?”’ He indicated the Blue Ridge with a bird-like jerk, and 
helped himself again to frumenty. 

“Your description applies there, too, sir. It’s a little rough and 
ready, but — it’s a damned fine army!” 

““Kernstown did n’t shake it?” 

““Kernstown was as much a victory as a defeat, sir. No, it didn’t 
shake it.” 

“‘ Morale good?” 

“Extraordinarily so. That army is all right, sir.” 

“T wish,” said Ewell plaintively, “that I knew what to make of 
General Jackson. What do you make of him, major?” 

“T make a genius, sir.” 


224 THE LONG ROLL 


Ewell raised his shoulder and ducked his head, his bright round 
eyes much like a robin’s. “And he is n’t crazy?” 

“‘Not in the very least.” 

“Well, I’ve had my doubts. I am glad to hear you say that. I 
want to think mighty well of the man who leads me. That Romney 
trip now? — of course, I only heard Loring’s side. He does n’t just 
wind in and out of mountains for the fun of doing it?” 

“T think that, generally speaking, he has some other object in view, 
sir. I think that acquaintance with General Jackson will show you 
what I mean. It develops confidence in a very marked fashion.” 

Ewell listened bright-eyed. “I am glad to hear you say that, 
for damn me, confidence is what I want! I want, sir, to be world- 
without-end-sure that my commanding officer is forever and 
eternally right, and then I want to be let go ahead! — I want to be 
let feel just as though I were a captain of fifty dragoons, and no- 
thing to do but to get back to post by the sunset gun and report the 
work done! — And so you think that when my force and old JaEe 
son’s force get together we'll do big things?” 

“Fairly big, sir. It is fortunate to expect them. They will arrive 
the sooner.’ 

Ewell bobbed his head. “‘ Yes, yes, that’s true! Now, major, I’m 
going to review the troops this morning, and then I’ll write an 
answer for General Jackson, and you'll take it to him and tell him 
I’m coming on by Stanardsville, just as he says, and that I’ll rest 
on Sunday. Maybe even we’ll find a church — Presbyterian.’’ 
He rose. “You’d better come with me. —I’ve got some more 
questions to ask. Better see my troops, too. Old Jackson might 
as well know what beautiful children I’ve got. Have you any idea 
yourself what I’m expected to do at Stanardsville?”’ 

‘‘T don’t know what General Jackson expects, sir. But my own 
idea is that you’ll not be long at Stanardsville.” 

“He’ll whistle again, will he?” 

“TI think so. But I speak without authority.” 

“There’s an idea abroad that he means to leave the Valley — 
come east — cross the mountains himself instead of my crossing 
them. What do you think of that?” 

“IT am not in his council, sir. The Valley people would hate to 
see him go.” 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH 225 


“Well, all that I can say is that I hope Banks is puzzled, too! — 
Jim, Jim! damn you, where’s my sword and sash ?” 

As they went Ewell talked on in his piping voice. ‘General 
Jackson must n’t fling my brigades against windmills or lose them 
in the mountains! I’m fair to confess I feel anxious. Out on the 
plains when we chase Apaches we chase ’em! We don’t go deviating 
like a love vine all over creation. — That’s Harry Hayes’s band — 
playing some Frenchy thing or other! Cavalry’s over there — I 
know you’ve got Ashby, but Flournoy and Munford are right 
wicked, too!”’ 

“The — Virginia is with you, sir?” 

“Yes. Fine regiment. You know it?” 

“T know one of its officers — Major Stafford.” 

“Oh, we all know Maury Stafford! Fine fellow, but damned 
restless. General Taylor says he is in love. I was in love once my- 
self, but I don’t remember that I was restless. He is. He was with 
Loring but transferred. — You went to Romney together?” 

“Yes, we went together.” 

“Fine fellow, but unhappy. Canker somewhere, I should say. 
Here we are, and if General Jackson don’t treat my army well, 
bab Vit 1) know he’s crazy!’ 

The review was at last over. Back under the wine sap Ewell 
wrote his answer to Jackson, then, curled in a remarkable attitude 
on the bench beneath the tree (“‘I’m a nervous major-general, sir. 
Can’t help it. Did n’t sleep. Can’t sleep.”), put Cleave through a 
catechism searching and shrewd. His piping, treble voice, his varied 
oaths and quaintly petulant talk, his roughness of rind and inner 
sweetness made him, crumpled under the apple tree, in his grey garb 
and cavalry boots, with his bright sash and bright eyes, a figure 
mellow and olden out of an ancient story. Cleave also, more largely 
built, more muscular, a little taller, with a dark, thin, keen face, 
the face of a thinking man-at-arms, clad in grey, clean but worn, 
seated on a low stool beneath the tinted boughs, his sword between 
his knees, his hands clasped over the hilt, his chin on his hands — 
Cleave, too, speaking of skirmishes, of guns and horsemen, of the 
massed enemy, of mountain passes and fordable rivers, had the 
value of a figure from a Flemish or Venetian canvas. The form of 
the moment was of old time, old as the smell of apple blossoms or 


226 THE LONG ROLL 


the buzzing of the bees; old as these and yet persistently, too, of the 
present as were these. The day wore on to afternoon, and at last 
the messenger from Jackson was released. 

The — Virginia had its encampment upon the edge of a thick 
and venerable wood, beech and oak, walnut and hickory. Regi- 
mental headquarters was indeed within the forest, half a dozen 
tents pitched in a glade sylvan enough for Robin Hood. Here 
Cleave found Stafford sitting, writing, before the adjutant’s tent. 
He looked up, laid down his pen and rose. ‘‘Ah! Where did you 
come from? I thought you in the Valley, in training for a briga- 
dier!”’ He came forward, holding out his hand. ‘‘I am glad to see 
you. Welcome to Camp Ewell!” 

Cleave’s hand made no motion from his side. ‘Thank you,” he 
said. “It is good when a man can feel that he is truly welcome.” 

The other was not dull, nor did he usually travel by indirection. 
“You will not shake hands,’ he said. “I think we have not been 
thrown together since that wretched evening at Bloomery Gap. 
Do you bear malice for that?”’ | 

“Do you think that I do?” 

The other shrugged. “Why, I should not have thought so. 
What is it, then?” 

“Let us go where we can speak without interruption. The woods 
down there?”’ 

They moved down one of the forest aisles. The earth was car- 
peted with dead leaves from beneath which rose the wild flowers. 
The oak was putting forth tufts of rose velvet, the beech a veil of 
pale and satiny green. The sky above was blue, but, the sun being 
low, the space beneath the lacing boughs was shadowy enough. The 
two men stopped beside the bole of a giant beech, silver-grey, 
splashed with lichens. “Quiet enough here,” said Stafford. ‘Well, 
what is it, Richard Cleave?” 

“T have not much to say,” said Cleave. “I will not keep you 
many moments. I will ask you to recall to mind the evening of the 
seventeenth of last April.” 

“Well, I have done so. It is not difficult.” 

“No. It would, I imagine, come readily. Upon that evening, 
Maury Stafford, you lied to me.” 

(<9 I Se 


> 


CLEAVE AND JUDITH oy a 


“Don’t!” said Cleave. “Why should you make it worse? The 
impression which, that evening, you deliberately gave me, you on 
every after occasion as deliberately strengthened. Your action, then 
and since, brands you, sir, for what you are!” 

‘‘And where,’ demanded Stafford hoarsely, “where did you 
get this precious information —or misinformation? Who was 
at the pains to persuade you —no hard matter, I warrant! — 
that I was dealing falsely? Your informant, sir, was mistaken, 
and I—” 

A shaft of sunshine, striking between the boughs, flooded the 
space in which they stood. It lit Cleave’s head and face as by a 
candle closely held. The other uttered a sound, a hard and painful 
gasp. “You have seen her!”’ 

Ves,” 

“Did she tell you that ?”’ 

“No. She does not know why I misunderstood. Nor shall I tell 
tots oat 

““You have seen her — You are hapey? 

“Yes, I am happy.” 

‘“‘She loves you — She is going to marry you?” 

i Veq 7 

The wood stood very quiet. The shaft of light drew up among 
the boughs. Stafford leaned against the trunk of the beech. He was 
breathing heavily; he looked, veritably, a wounded man. “TI will 
go now,” said Cleave. “I had to speak to you and I had to warn 
you. Good-day.” 

He tured, the leaves crisp beneath his footfall. “Wait,” said 
Stafford. “One moment —” He drew himself up against the 
beech. “I wish to tell you why 14s you phrase it — lied to you. 
I allowed you to rest under that impression which I am not sure that 
I myself gave you, because I thought her yet trembling between us, 
and that your withdrawal would be advantageous to my cause. 
Not for all of Heaven would I have had her turn to you! Now that, 
apparently, I have lost her irrevocably, I will tell you that you do 
not love her as I do. Have I not watched you? Did she die to-day, 
you would go on to-morrow with your Duty — Duty — Duty — ! 
For me, I would kill myself on her grave. Where you and I were 
rivals and enemies, now we are enemies. Look out for me, Richard 


228 THE LONG. ROLL 


Cleave!” He began to laugh, a broken and mirthless sound. 
“Look out for me, Richard Cleave. Go!” 

“T shall,” said Cleave. “I will not keep a watch upon you in such 
a moment, nor remember it. I doubt neither your passion nor 
your suffering. But in one thing, Maury Stafford, you have lied 
again. I love as strongly, and I love more highly than you do! 
As for your threats —threatened men live long.”’ 

He turned, left the forest glade and came out into the camp 
lying now beneath the last rays of the sun. That evening he spent 
with Ewell and his staff, passed the night in a friendly tent, and at 
dawn turned Dundee’s head toward the Blue Ridge. 


CHAPTER XVill 
McDOWELL 


T Stanardsville he heard from a breathless crowd about the 
small hotel news from over the mountains. Banks was at 
last in motion — was marching, nineteen thousand strong, 

up the Valley — had seized New Market, and, most astounding and 
terrific of all to the village boys, had captured a whole company of 
Ashby’s! ‘General Jackson?”’ General Jackson had burned the 
railway station at Mt. Jackson and fallen back — was believed to 
be somewhere about Harrisonburg. 

‘““Any other news?” 

“Yes, sir! Frémont’s pressing south from Moorefield, Milroy 
east from Monterey! General Edward Johnson’s had to fall back 
from the Alleghenies! — he’s just west of Staunton. He has n’t got 
but a brigade and a half.” 

‘Anything more?”’ 

““Stage’s just brought the Richmond papers. All about Albert 
Sydney Johnston’s death at Shiloh. He led the charge and a minie 
ball struck him, and he said ‘Lay me down. Fight on.’” 

“Fort Pulaski’s taken! The darned gunboats battered down the 
wall. All of the garrison that ain’t dead are prisoners.” 

“News from New Orleans ain’t hilarious. Damned mortar boats 
bombard and bombard! — four ships, they say, against Fort Saint 
Philip, more against Fort Jackson. Air full of shells. Farragut may 
try to run forts and batteries, Chalmette and all —” 

“What else?” 

“Looks downright bad down t’ Richmond. McClellan’s landed 
seventy-five thousand men. Magruder lost a skirmish at York- 
town. All the Richmond women are making sandbags for the forti- 
fications. Papers talk awful calm and large, but if Magruder gives 
way and Johnston can’t keep McClellan back, I reckon there’ll be 
hell to pay! I reckon Richmond II fall.” 

“Anything more?”’ 


230 THE LONG ROLL 


“That’s all to-day.” 

The village wag stepped forth, half innocent and half knave. 
“‘Saay, colonel! The prospects of this here Confederacy look rather 
blue.” 

“Tt is wonderful,” said Cleave, “how quickly blue can turn 
to grey.” 

A portion of that night he spent at a farmhouse at the western 
mouth of Swift Run Gap. Between two and three he and Harris 
and Dundee and the grey were again upon the road. It wound 
through forests and by great mountains, all wreathed in a ghostly 
mist. The moon shone bright, but the cold was clinging. It had 
rained and on the soft wood road the horses feet fell noiselessly. 
The two men rode in silence, cloaks drawn close, hats over their 
eyes. 

Behind them in the east grew slowly the pallor of the dawn. The 
stars waned, the moon lost her glitter, in the woods to either side 
began a faint peeping of birds. The two came to Conrad’s Store, 
where the three or four houses lay yet asleep. An old negro, sweep- 
ing the ground before a smithy, hobbled forward at Harris’s call. 
“‘Lawd, marster, enny news? I specs, sah, I’ll hab ter ax you "bout 
dat. I ain’ heard none but dat dar wuz er skirmish at Rude’s Hill, 
en er skirmish at New Market, en er-nurr skirmish at Sparta, en dat 
Gineral Jackson hold de foht, sah, at Harrisonburg, en dat de Yan- 
kees comin’, lickerty-split, up de Valley, en dat de folk at Magaheys- 
ville air powerful oneasy in dey minds fer fear dey’ll deviate dis 
way. Howsomever, we’s got er home guard ef dey do come, wid ole 
Mr. Smith what knew Gin’ral Washington at de haid. En dar wuz 
some bridges burnt, I hearn, en Gineral Ashby he had er fight on 
de South Fork, en I cyarn think ob no mo’ jes now, sah! But Gineral 
Jackson he sholy holdin’ de foht at Harrisonburg. — Yes, sah, dat’s 
de Magaheysville road.” 

The South Fork of the Shenandoah lay beneath a bed of mist. 
They crossed by a wooden bridge and came up again to the chill 
woods. Dim purple streaks showed behind them in the east, but 
there was yet no glory and no warmth. Before them rose a long, 
low mountain ridge, a road running along the crest. ‘That cer- 
tainly is damn funny!” said Harris; “unless I’ve taken to seeing 
sights.” 


McDOWELL 231 


Cleave checked his horse. Above them, along the ridge top, was 
moving anarmy. It made no noise on the soft, moist road, artillery 
wheel and horse’s hoof quiet alike. It seemed to wish to move 
quietly, without voice. The quarter of the sky above the ridge was 
coldly violet, palely luminous. All these figures stood out against 
it, soldiers with their muskets, colour-bearer with furled colours, 
officers on foot, officers on horseback, guns, caissons, gunners, 
horses, forges, ordnance wagons, commissary — van, main body 
and rear, an army against the daybreak sky. 

“Well, if ever I saw the like of that!’ breathed the orderly. 
“What d’ ye reckon it means, sir?”’ 

“Tt means that General Jackson is moving east from Harrison- 
burg.”’ 

“Not a sound — D?’ ye reckon they’re ghosts, sir?” 

“No. They’re the Army of the Valley — There! the advance 
has made the turn.” 

Toward them swung the long column, through the stillness of the 
dawn, down the side of the ridge, over the soundless road, into the 
mist of the bottom lands. The leading regiment chanced to be the 
2d; colonel and adjutant and others riding at the head. “Hello! 
It’s Richard Cleave! — The top of the morning to you, Cleave! — 
knew that Old Jack had sent you off somewhere, but did n’t know 
where. — Where are we going? By God, if you'll tell us, we’ll tell 
you! Apparently we’re leaving the Valley — damn it all! Train 
to Richmond by night, I reckon. We’ve left Fourth of July, 
Christmas, and New Year behind us — Banks rubbing his hands, 
Frémont doing a scalp dance, Milroy choosing headquarters in 
Staunton! Well, it does n’t stand thinking of. You had as well 
waited for us at the Gap. The general? Just behind, head of main 
column. He’s jerked that right hand of his into the air sixteen times 
since we left Harrisonburg day before yesterday, and the staff says 
he prays at night most powerful. Done a little praying myself; 
hope the Lord will look after the Valley, seeing we are n’t going to do 
it ourselves!” 

Cleave drew his horse to one side. “‘I’ll wait here until he comes 
up — no, not the Lord; General Jackson. I want, too, to speak 
to Will. Where in column is the 65th?” 

“Fourth, I think. He’s a nice boy — Will. It was pretty to 


232 THE LONG ROLL 


watch him at Kernstown—V. M. I. airs and precision, and 
gallantry enough for a dozen!”’ 

“T’ll tell him you said so, colonel! Good-bye!”’ 

Will, too, wanted to know — he said that Mr. Rat wanted to 
know — all the fellows wanted to know, what — (‘‘I wish you’d let 
me swear, Richard!’’) what it all meant? “Mr. Rat and I don’t 
believe he’s responsible — it is n’t in the least like his usual con- 
duct! Old Jack backing away from cannons and such — quitting 
parade ground before it’s time! — marching off to barracks with 
a beautiful rumpus behind him! It ain’t natural! Mark my words, 
Richard, and Mr. Rat thinks so, too, it’s General Lee or General 
Johnston, and he’s got to obey and can’t help himself! — What do 
you think?” 

“T think it will turn out all right. Now march on, boy! The 
colonel says he watched you at Kernstown; says you did mighty 
well — ‘ gallant for a dozen!’ ” 

General Jackson on Little Sorrel was met with further on. Im- 
perturbable and self-absorbed, with his weather-stained uniform, 
his great boots, his dreadful cap, he exhibited as he rode a demeanour 
in which there was neither heaviness nor lightness. Never jovial, 
seldom genial, he was on one day much what he was on another — 
saving always battle days. Riding with his steadfast grey-blue 
eyes level before him, he communed with himself or with Heaven — 
certainly not with his dissatisfied troops. 

He acknowledged Cleave’s salute, and took the letter which the 
other produced. ‘‘ Good! good! What did you do at Charlottesville? ”’ 

“T sent the stores on to Major Harman at Staunton, sir. There 
was a good deal of munition.”” He gave a memorandum. 


One hundred rifled muskets with bayonets. 
Belgian ?) DB ” 

Fifty flintlocks. 

Two hundred pikes. 

Five hundred pounds cannon powder. 

Two fe <i ISKeL 2 

Five thousand rounds of cartridge. 

Eight sets artillery harness. 

Ten artillery sabres. 

One large package of lint. 

One small case drugs and surgical instruments. 


” bp 


McDOW ELL 233 


“Good, good,” said Jackson. “What day?” 

“Monday, sir. Virginia Central that afternoon. I telegraphed 
to Major Harman.” | 

‘“‘Good!’’ He folded the slip of paper between his large fingers 
and transferred it to his pocket. ‘‘I will read General Ewell’s 
letter. Later I may wish to ask you some questions. That is 
all, major.” 

Cleave rode back to the 65th. Presently, the sun now brilliantly 
up, the Army of the Valley, in no sunny mood, crossed the bridge 
over the Shenandoah. There was a short halt. A company of 
Ashby’s galloped from the rear and drew off into a strip of level 
beside the bridge. A section of artillery followed suit. The army 
understood that for some reason or other and for some length of 
time or other the bridge was to be guarded, but it understood no- 
thing more. Presently the troops passed Conrad’s Store, where the 
old negro, reinforced now by the dozen white inhabitants, gaped at 
the tramping column. The white men asked stuttering questions, 
and as the situation dawned upon them they indulged in irritating 
comment. ‘‘Say, boys, where in the Lord’s name air you going? 
We want you on this side of the Blue Ridge — you ain’t got any 
call to go on the other! —if you’ve got any Tuckahoes, let them go, 
but you Cohees stay in your native land — Valley men ain’t got 
no right to go! What’d the women say to you along the road? Clearing 
out like a passel of yaller dogs afore there’s trouble and leavin’ 
them an’ the children to entertain the Yankees!” 

Harris, coming up with the orderlies, found the old negro at 
his mare’s bridle. ‘‘ Well, marster, I sholy did think I wuz tellin’ 
de truf, sah, bout Gin’ral Jackson holdin’ de foht at Harrisonburg! 
En now he done ’vacuate hit, en Gin’ral Banks he prance right in! 
Hit look powerful cu’rous, hit sho do. But dar! I done seed de stars 
all fallin’ way back in ’33, en dat wuz powerful cu’rous too, fer de 
worl’ did n’t come ter an eend — Mebbe, sah, he jes’ er drawin’ dat 
gent’man on?” 

Sullen and sorry, the army marched on, and at noon came to 
Elk Run Valley on the edge of Swift Run Gap. When the men 
stacked arms and broke ranks, it was upon the supposition that, 
dinner over, they would resume the march. They did not so; they 
stayed ten days in Elk Run Valley. 


234 THE LONG ROLL 


All around were the mountains, heavily timbered, bold and path- 
less. Beyond Conrad’s Store, covering Jackson’s front, rushed the 
Shenandoah, the bridge guarded by Ashby’s men. There were pick- 
ets enough between the river and the camp; north, south, and east 
rose the mountains, and on the other side of Swift Run Gap, near 
Stanardsville, lay Ewell and his eight thousand. The encampment 
occupied low and flat ground, through which ran a swollen creek. 
The spring had been on the whole inclement, and now, with sudden- 
ness, winter came back for a final word. One day there was a whirl of 
snow, another was cold and harsh, on the third there set in a chilly 
rain. It rained and rained, and all the mountain streams came down 
in torrents and still further swelled the turbid creek. One night, 
about halfway through their stay, the creek came out of its banks 
and flooded the surrounding land. All tents, huts, and shelters of 
boughs for a hundred feet each side acquired a liquid flooring. 
There arose an outcry on the midnight air. Wet and cursing, half 
naked and all a-shiver, men disentangled themselves from their 
soaked blankets, snatched up clothing and accoutrements, and 
splashed through a foot of icy water to slightly dryer quarters on the 
rising ground. 

Snow, rain, freeze, thaw, impatience, listlessness, rabid con- 
jecture, apathetic acquiescence, quarrels, makeups, discomfort, 
ennui, a deal of swearing (carefully suppressed around headquarters) 
drill whenever practicable, two Sunday services and one prayer 
meeting! — the last week of April 1862 in Elk Run Valley was one 
to be forgotten without a pang. There was an old barn which the 
artillery had seized upon, that leaked like a sieve, and there was a 
_ deserted tannery that still filled the air with an evil odour, and there 
was change of pickets, and there were rain-sodden couriers to be 
observed coming and going (never anything to be gotten out of 
them), and there were the mountains hung with grey clouds. The 
wood was always wet and would not burn. Coffee was so low that 
it was served only every other day, besides being half chicory, 
and the commissary had been cheated into getting a lot of poor 
tobacco. The guardhouse accommodated more men than usual. 
A squad of Ashby’s brought in five deserters, all found on the back- 
ward road to the Valley. One said that he was sick and that his 
mother had always nursed him; another that he was only going to 


McDOWELL 235 


see that the Yankees had n’t touched the farm, and meant to come 
right back; another that the war was over, anyhow; another that 
he had had a bad dream and could n’t rest until he saw that his 
wife was alive; the fifth that he was tired of living; and the sixth 
said nothing at all. Jackson had the six put in irons, and it was 
thought that after the court martial they would be shot. 

On the twenty-ninth Ashby, from the other side of the Shenan- 
doah, made a demonstration in force against the enemy at Harrison- 
burg, and the next day, encountering the Federal cavalry, drove 
them back to the town. That same afternoon the Army of the Val- 
ley, quitting without regret Elk Run Valley, found itself travelling 
an apparently bottomless road that wound along the base of the 
mountains. 

“For the Lord’s sake, where are we going now?” 

“This is the worst road to Port Republic.” 

“Why are we going to Port Republic?”’ 

“Boys, I don’t know. Anyway, we ain’t going through the Gap. 
We’re still in the Valley.” 

“By gosh, I’ve heard the captain give some mighty good 
guesses! I’m going to ask him. — Captain, what d’ ye reckon we 
camped ten days in that mud hole for?”’ 

Hairston Breckinridge gave the question consideration. ‘‘ Well, 
Tom, maybe there were reasons, after all. General Ewell, for in- 
stance — he could have joined us there any minute. They say he’s 
going to take our place at Elk Run to-night!” 

“That so? Wish him joy of the mud hole!” 

“And we could have been quickly reinforced from Richmond. 
General Banks would know all that, and ’t would make him even 
less eager than he seems to be to leave the beaten way and come 
east himself. Nobody wants dim, you know, on the other side of 
the Blue Ridge.” 

“That’s so— ” 

‘And for all he knew, if he moved north and west to join Fré- 
mont we might pile out and strike Milroy, and if he went south and 
west to meet Milroy he might hear of something happening to 
Frémont.” 

“That’s so— ” 

“And if he moved south on Staunton he might find himself 


236 THE LONG ROLL 


caught like a scalybark in a nut cracker — Edward Johnson on one 
side and the Army of the Valley on the other.” 

(lnae sso! 

“The other day I asked Major Cleave if General Jackson never 
amused himself in any way — never played any game, chess for 
instance. He said, ‘Not at all — which was lucky for the other 
chess player.’ ” 

“Well, he ought to know, for he’s a mighty good chess player 
himself. And you think —”’ 

‘‘T think General Banks has had to stay where he is.” 

‘““And where are we going now — besides Port Republic?” 

“T have n’t any idea. But I’m willing to bet that we’re going 
somewhere.” 

The dirt roads, after the incessant rains, were mud, mud, mud! 
ordinarily to the ankles, extraordinarily to the knees of the march- 
ing infantry. The wagon train moved in front, and the heavy wheels 
made for the rest a track something like Christian’s through the 
Slough of Despond. The artillery brought up the rear and fared 
worst of all. Guns and caissons slid heavily into deep mud holes. 
The horses strained — poor brutes! but their iron charges stuck 
fast. The drivers used whip and voice, the officers swore, there 
arose calls for Sergeant Jordan. Appearing, that steed tamer picked 
his way to the horses’ heads, spoke to them, patted them, and in 
a reasonable voice said, ““Get up!” They did it, and the train 
dragged on to the next bog, deeper than before. Then da capo — 
stuck wheels, straining teams, oaths, adjuration, at last “‘Sergeant 
Jordan!” 

So abominable was the road that the army went like a tortoise, 
a mud tortoise. Twilight found it little more than five miles from 
its starting-point, and the bivouac that night was by the comfort- 
less roadside, in the miry bushes, with fires of wet wood, and small 
and poor rations. Clouds were lowering and a chilly wind fretted 
the forests of the Blue Ridge. Around one of the dismal, smoky 
fires an especially dejected mess found a spokesman with a vocabu- 
lary rich in comminations. 

“Sh!” breathed one of the ring. “Officer coming by. Heard 
you too, Williams — all that about Old Jack.” 

A figure wrapped in a cloak passed just upon the rim of the fire- 


McDOW ELL oy, 


light. “I don’t think, men,” said a voice, “that you are in a posi- 
tion to judge. If I have brought you by this road it is for your own 
good.” 

He passed on, the darkness taking him. Day dawned as best it 
might through grey sheets of rain. Breakfast was a mockery, damp 
hardtack holding the centre of the stage. A very few men had cold 
coffee in their canteens, but when they tried to heat it the miser- 
able fire went out. On marched the Army of the Valley, in and out 
of the great rain-drenched, mist-hidden mountains, on the worst 
road to Port Republic. Road, surrounding levels, and creek-bed 
had somehow lost identity. One was like the other, and none had 
any bottom. Each gun had now a corps of pioneers, who, casting 
stone and brushwood into the morass, laboriously built a road for 
the piece. Whole companies of infantry were put at this work. 
The officers helped, the staff dismounted and helped, the command- 
ing general was encountered, rain-dripping, mud-spattered, a log 
on his shoulder or a great stone in his hands. All this day they made 
but five miles, and at night they slept in something like a lake, 
with a gibing wind above to whisper What’s it for? —What’s it 
for ? 

May the second was of a piece with May the first. On the morn- 
ing of May the third the clouds broke and the sun came out. It 
found the troops bivouacked just east of the village of Port Repub- 
lic, and it put into them life and cheer. Something else helped, and 
that was the fact that before them, clear and shining in the morning 
light, stretched, not the neglected mountain road they had been 
travelling, but a fair Valley road, the road to Staunton. 

Jackson and his staff had their quarters at the neighbouring house 
of General Lewis. At breakfast one of the ladies remarked that the 
Staunton road was in good condition, and asked the guest of honour 
how long it would take the army to march the eighteen miles. 

“Ts that the exact distance?’’ asked the general. “Eighteen 
miles?” 

“Yes, sir; just about eighteen. You should get there, should you 
not, by night?” 

“You are fortunate,” said the general, “in having a great natural 
curiosity at your very doors. I have long wanted to see Weyers’s 
Cave. A vast cavern like that, hollowed out by God’s finger, hung 


238 THE LONG ROLL 


with stalactites, with shells and banners of stone, filled with sound- 
ing aisles, run through by dark rivers in which swim blind fish — 
how wonderful a piece of His handiwork! I have always wished to 
see it — the more so that my wife has viewed it and told me of its 
marvels. I always wish, madam, to rest my eyes where my wife’s 
have rested.” 

The bugles ringing “ Fall in!” were positively sweet to the ears 
of the soldiers of the Valley. “Fall in? with pleasure, sir! Eighteen 
miles? What’s eighteen miles when you’re going home? It’s a fine 
old road anyhow, with more butterflies on it! We’ll double-quick it 
all the way if Old Jack wants us!” 

“That man back there says Staunton’s awfully anxious. Says 
people all think we’ve gone to reinforce Richmond without caring 
a damn what becomes of the Valley. Says Milroy is within ten miles 
of Staunton, and Banks’s just waiting a little longer before he pulls 
up stakes at Harrisonburg and comes down the pike to join him. 
Says Edward Johnson ain’t got but a handful, and that the Staun- 
ton women are hiding their silver. Says —Here’s Old jack, boys! 
going to lead us himself back to Goshen! One cheer ain’t enough 
— three cheers for General Jackson!” 

Jackson, stiffly lifting the old forage cap, galloped by upon Little 
Sorrel. His staff behind him, he came to the head of the column 
where it was drawn up on the fair road leading through Port Re- 
public, south and west to Staunton. Close on the eastern horizon 
rose the Blue Ridge. To this side turned off a rougher, narrower 
way, piercing at Brown’s Gap the great mountain barrier between 
the Valley and Piedmont Virginia. 

The column was put into motion, the troops stepping out briskly. 
Warm and lovely was the sunshine, mildly still the air. Big cherry 
trees were in bloom by the wayside: there was a buzzing of honey 
bees, a slow fluttering of yellow butterflies above the fast drying 
mud puddles. Throughout the ranks sounded a clearing of throats; 
it was evident that the men felt like singing, presently would sing. 
The head of the column came to the Brown’s Gap Road. 

“What’s that stony old road?” asked a Winchester man. 

“That’s a road over the mountains into Albemarle. Thank the 
Lord — ” 

“Column left. MARCH!” 


McDOW ELL 239 


It rang infernally. Column left. MARCH! — Not a freight boat 
horn winding up the James at night, not the minie’s long screech, 
not Gabriel’s trump, not anything could have sounded at this 
moment so mournfully in the ears of the Army of the Valley. It 
wheeled to the left, it turned its back to the Valley, it took the 
stony road to Brown’s Gap, it deeply tasted the spring of tragic 
disappointment. 

The road climbed and climbed through the brilliant weather. 
Spur and wall, the Blue Ridge shimmered in May greenery, was 
wrapped in happy light and in sweet odours, was carpeted with wild 
flowers and ecstatic with singing birds. Only the Army of the Val- 
ley was melancholy — desperately melancholy. Here and there 
through openings, like great casements in the foliage, wide views 
might be had of the Valley they were leaving. Town and farm and 
mill with turning wheel were there, ploughed land and wheat fields, 
Valley roads and Valley orchards, green hills and vales and noble 
woods, all the great vale between mountain chains, two hundred 
miles from north to south, twenty-five from Blue Ridge to Alle- 
ghenies! The men looked wistfully, with grieved, children’s faces. 

At the top of the mountain there was a short halt. The up-hill 
pull had been hard enough, heavy hearts and all! The men dropped 
upon the earth between the pine trees of the crest. For the most 
part they lay in the sullen silence with which they had climbed. 
Some put their heads upon their arms, tilted hat or cap over their 
eyes. Others chewed a twig or stalk of grass and gazed upon the 
Valley they were leaving, or upon the vast eastward stretch of 
Piedmont, visible also from the mountain top. It was bright and 
quiet up here above the world. The sunshine drew out the strong, 
life-giving odour of the pines, the ground was dry and warm, it 
should have been a pleasant place to drowse in and be happy. 
But the Valley soldiers were not happy. Jackson, riding by a 
recumbent group, spoke from the saddle. ‘“That’s right, men! You 
rest all over, lying down.” In the morning this group had cheered 
him loudly; now it saluted in a genuine “‘ Bath to Romney” silence. 
He rode by, imperturbable. His chief engineer was with him, and 
they went on to a flat rock commanding both the great views, east 
and west. Here they dismounted, and between them unfurled a 
large map, weighting its corners with pine cones. The soldiers below 


240 THE LONG ROLL 


them gazed dully. Old Jack — or Major-General T. J. Jackson — 
or Fool Tom Jackson was forever looking at maps. It was a trick 
of his, as useless as saying “Good! good!” or jerking his hand in 
the air in that old way. 


That evening the Army of the Valley slept in emerald meadows 
beside Meechum’s River in Albemarle. Coming down the moun- 
tain it had caught distant glimpses of white spirals of smoke float- 
ing from the overworked engines of the Virginia Central; and now 
it lay near a small country station, and there on the switch were 
empty cars and empty cars! —cars to go to Richmond on. The army 
groaned and got its supper, took out its pipe and began, though re- 
luctantly enough, to regard the situation with a philosophic eye. 
What was done was done! The Blue Ridge lay between it and the 
Valley, and after all Old Joe must be wanting soldiers pretty badly 
down at Richmond! The landscape was lovely, the evening tran- 
quil and sweet. The army went to bed early, and went in a frame 
of mind approaching resignation. This was Saturday evening; Old 
Jack would rest to-morrow. 

Sunday dawned clear and sweet. Pleasant morning — no drill, 
and light camp duties — coffee, hot biscuits, good smoke — general 
Sunday atmosphere — bugler getting ready to sound “ Church!” 
—regimental chaplains moving toward chosen groves — ‘‘ Old Hun- 
dred”’ in the air. — ‘‘Oh, come on and go! All the people are going 
at home.” 

And, after all, no one in the Army of the Valley went to church! 
The bugler blew another call, the chaplains stopped short in their 
sedate stride, short as if they had been shot, “Old Hundred” was 
not sung. Break camp — Break camp! 

The regiments, marching down to Meechum’s Station, were of 
one mind. Old Jack was losing his religion. Manassas on Sunday — 
Kernstown on Sunday — forced marches on Sunday — Sunday train 
to Richmond. Language failed. 

There were long lines of cars, some upon the main track, others 
on the siding. The infantry piled in, piled atop. Out of each 
window came three or four heads. ‘You fellows on the roof, 
you’re taller’n we are! Air we the first train? That’s good, we’ll 
be the first to say howdy to McClellan. You all up there, don’t 


McDOWELL 241 


dangle your legs that-a-way! You’re as hard to see through as 
Old Jack!” 

Company after company filed into the poor old cars that were 
none too large, whose ante-bellum days were their best days, who 
never had time now to be repaired or repainted, or properly cleaned. 
Squad by squad swung itself up to the cindery roof and sat there 
in rows, feet over the edge, the central space between heaped with 
haversacks and muskets. 

“od — 4th — 5th — 65th — Jerusalem! the whole brigade’s 
going on this train! Another’s coming right behind—why don’t 
they wait for it? Crowding gentlemen in this inconsiderate fashion! 
Oh, ain’t it hot? Wish I was going to Niagara, to a Know-Nothing 
Convention! Our train’s full. There’s the engine coming down the 
siding! You all on top, can you see the artillery and the wagons?”’ 

“Yes. Way over there. Going along a road — nice shady road. 
Rockbridge ’s leading — ” 

“That’s the road to Rockfish Gap.” 

“Rockfish Gap? Go ’way! You’ve put your compass in the 
wrong pocket. Rockfish Gap’s back where we came from. Look 
out!” 

The backing engine and the waiting cars came together with a 
grinding bump. An instant’s pause, a gathering of force, a mighty 
puffing and, slow and jerkily, the cars began to move. The ground 
about Meechum’s Station was grey with soldiers — part of the 
Stonewall, most of Burk’s and Fulkerson’s brigades, waiting for the 
_ second train and the third train and their turn to fill the cars. 
They stood or leaned against the station platform, or they sat upon 
the warm red earth beneath the locust trees, white and sweet with 
hanging bloom. ‘Good-bye, boys! See you in Richmond — 
Richmond on the James! Don’t fight McClellan till we get there! 
That engine’s just pulling them beyond the switch. Then that one 
below there will back up and hitch on at the eastern end. — That’s 
funny!”’ The men sitting on the warm red earth beneath the locust 
trees sprang to their feet. “That train ain’t coming back! Before 
the Lord, they’re going west!” 

Back to Meechum’s Station, from body and top of the out- 
going train floated wild cheering. “Staunton! We’re going to 
Staunton! We’re going back to the Valley! We’re going home! 


242 THE LONG ROLL 


We’re going to get there first! We’re going to whip Banks! 
We’ve got Old Jack with ws. You all hurry up. Banks thinks we’ve 
gone to Richmond, but we ain’t! Yaaaih! Yaaaathhh! Yaaaith! 
Yaaaaaath!” 

At Meechum’s Station, beneath the locust trees, it was like bees 
swarming. Another train was on the main track, the head beauti- 
fully, gloriously westward! “Staunton! Good-bye, you little old 
Richmond, we ain’t going to see you this summer! — Feel good? 
I feel like a shouting Methodist! My grandmother was a shout- 
ing Methodist. I feel I’m going to shout — anyhow, I’ve got to 
sing — ”’ 

A chaplain came by with a beaming face. “‘Why don’t we all 
sing, boys? I’m sure I feel like it. It’s Sunday.” 


How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord — 


In Staunton it had been a day of indigo gloom. The comfortable 
Valley town, fair-sized and prosperous, with its pillared court 
house, its old hotel, its stores, its up and down hill streets, its 
many and shady trees, its good brick houses, and above the town 
its quaintly named mountains — Staunton had had, in the past 
twelve months, many an unwonted throb and thrill. To-day it was 
in a condition of genuine, dull, steady anxiety, now and then shot 
through by a fiercer pang. There had been in town a number of 
sick and convalescent soldiers. All these were sent several days be- 
fore, eastward, across the mountains. In the place were public and 
military stores. At the same time, a movement was made toward 
hiding these in the woods on the other side of the twin mountains 
Betsy Bell and Mary Grey. It was stopped by a courier from 
the direction of Swift Run Gap with a peremptory order. Leave 
those stores where they are. Staunton grumbled and wondered, but 
obeyed. And now the evening before, had come from Port Repub- 
lic, eighteen miles toward the Blue Ridge, a breathless boy on a 
breathless horse, with tidings that Jackson was at last and finally 
gone from the Valley — had crossed at Brown’s Gap that morning! 
“Called to Richmond!” groaned the crowd that accompanied 
the boy on his progress toward official Staunton. ‘‘Reckon Old 
Joe and General Lee think we’re small potatoes and few in a row. 
They ain’t, either of them, a Valley man. Reckon this time to-mor- 


McDOW ELL 243 


row Banks and Milroy’ll saunter along and dig us up! There’s old 
Watkin’s bugle! Home Guard, come along and drill!” 

Staunton did little sleeping that Saturday night. Jackson was 
gone — Ashby with him. There was not a Confederate vedette 
between the town and Banks at Harrisonburg — the latter was 
probably moving down the pike this very night, in the dark of the 
moon. Soldiers of Edward Johnson — tall Georgians and 44th 
Virginians — had been in town that Saturday, but they two were 
gone, suddenly recalled to their camp, seven miles west, on the 
Parkersburg road. Scouts had reported to Johnson that Milroy 
was concentrating at M’Dowell, twenty miles to the westward, and 
that Schenck, sent on by Frémont, had joined or would join him. 
Any hour they might move eastward on Staunton. Banks — Fré- 
mont — Milroy — three armies, forty thousand men — all con- 
verging on Staunton and its Home Guard, with the intent to 
make it even as Winchester! Staunton felt itself the mark of 
the gods, a mournful Rome, an endangered Athens, a tottering 
Carthage. 

Sunday morning, clear and fine, had its church bells. The children 
went to Sunday School, where they learned of Goliath and the 
brook Hebron, and David and his sling. At church time the pews 
were well filled — chiefly old men and women and young boys. The 
singing was fervent, the prayers were yet more so. The people 
prayed very humbly and heartily for their Confederacy, for their 
President and his Cabinet, and for Congress, for their Capital, so 
endangered, for their armies and their generals, for every soldier 
who wore the grey, for their blocked ports, for New Orleans, fallen 
last week, for Norfolk that the authorities said must be aban- 
doned, for Johnston and Magruder on the Peninsula — at that 
very hour, had they known it, in grips with Hancock at Williams- 
burg. 

Benediction pronounced, the congregation came out of the 
churchyards in time to greet with delight, not unmixed with a sense 
of the pathos of it, certain just arrived reinforcements. Four com- 
panies of Virginia Military Institute cadets, who, their teachers at 
their head, had been marched down for the emergency from Lexing- 
ton, thirty-eight miles away. Flushed, boyish, trig, grey and white 
uniformed, with shining muskets, seventeen years old at most, 


244 THE LONG ROLL 


beautifully marching with their band and their colours, amidst 
plaudits, tears, laughter, flowers, thrown kisses, they came down 
the street, wheeled, and before the court house were received by 
the Home Guard, an organization of greyheaded men. 

Sunday afternoon brought many rumours. Milroy would march 
from McDowell to-morrow — Banks was coming down the turn- 
pike—Frémont hovering closer. Excited country people flocked 
into town. Farmers whose sons were with Jackson came for advice 
from leading citizens. Ought they to bring’in the women and chil- 
dren? —no end of foreigners with the blue coats, and foreigners are 
rough customers! And stock? Better drive the cows up into the 
mountains and hide the horses? “‘Tom Watson says they’re awful 
wanton, — take what they want and kill the rest, and no more 
think of paying! — Says, too, they’re burning barns. What d’ you 
think we’d better do, sir?’’ There were Dunkards in the Valley 
who refused to go to war, esteeming it a sin. Some of these were in 
town, coming in on horseback or in their white-covered wagons, 
and bringing wife or daughter. The men were long-bearded and 
venerable of aspect; the women had peaceful Quaker faces, framed 
by the prim close bonnet of their peculiar garb. These quiet folk, 
too, were anxious-eyed. They would not resist evil, but their homes 
and barns were dear to their hearts. 

By rights the cadets should have been too leg weary for parade, 
but if Staunton (and the young ladies) wished to see how the 
V. M. I. did things, why, of course! In the rich afternoon light, 
band playing, Major Smith at their head, the newly-arrived Corps 
of Defence marched down the street toward a green field fit for 
evolutions. With it, on either sidewalk, went the town at large, 
specifically the supremely happy, small boy. The pretty girls were 
already in the field, seated, full skirted beneath the sweet locust 
trees. 

V. M. I., Home Guard, and attendant throng neared the Virginia 
Central. A whistle shrieked down the line, shrieked with enormous 
vigour — “ What’s that? Train due?” —‘‘No. Not due for an 
hour — always late then! Better halt until it pulls in. Can’t im- 
agine —”’ 

The engine appeared, an old timer of the Virginia Central, ex- 
citedly puffing dark smoke, straining in, like a racer to the goal. 


McDOWELL 245 


Behind it cars and cars — cars with men atop! They were all in 
grey — they were all yelling — the first car had a flag, the battle- 
flag of the Confederacy, the dear red ground, and the blue Saint 
Andrew’s Cross and the white stars. There were hundreds of 
men! hundreds and hundreds, companies, regiments, on the roof, 
on the platforms, half out of the windows, waving, shouting — no! 
singing — 
““We’re the Stonewall. 
Zoom! Zoom! 


We’re the openers of the ball. 
Zoom! Zoom! 


“Fix bayonets! Charge! 
Rip! Rip! 
N. P. Banks for our targe. 
Zip! Zip! 


“We wrote it on the way. 
Zoom! Zoom! 
Hope you like our little lay. 
Zoom! Zoom! 
For we did n’t go to Richmond and we’re coming home to stay!” 


Four days later, on Sitlington’s Hill, on the Bull Pasture Moun- | 
tain, thirty miles to the west of Staunton, a man sat at nightfall in 
the light of a great camp-fire and wrote a dispatch to his Govern- 
ment. There waited for it a swift rider — watching the stars while 
the general wrote, or the surgeons’ lanterns, like fireflies, wandering 
up and down the long green slopes where the litter bearers lifted the 
wounded, friend and foe. 

The man seated on the log wrote with slow precision a long 
dispatch, covering several pages of paper. Then he read it over, and 
then he looked for a minute or two at the flitting lanterns, and then 
he slowly tore the dispatch in two, and fed the fire with the pieces. 
The courier, watching him write a much shorter message, half put 
forth his hand to’take it, for his horse whinnied upon the road far 
below, and the way to Staunton was long and dark. However, Jack- 
son’s eyes again dwelt on the grey slopes before him and on the 
Alleghenies, visited by stars, and then, as slowly as before, he tore 
this dispatch also across and across and dropped the pieces on the 


246 THE LONG ROLL 


brands. When they were burned he wrote a single line, signed and 
folded it, and gave it to the courier. The latter, in the first pink 
light, in the midst of a jubilant Staunton, read it to the excited 


operator in the little telegraph station. 


“God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday. 
Hole VACKSON 
‘‘ Major-General.” 


CHAP Titik. ALx 
THE FLOWERING WOOD 


HANK you, ma’am,” said Allan. “I reckon just so long as 
there are such women in the Valley there’ll be worth-while 
men there, too! You’ve all surely done your share.” 

“Now, you’ve got the pot of apple butter, and the bucket with 
the honeycomb, and the piece of bacon and the light bread. If 
you’d come a little earlier I could have let you have some eggs —”’ 

“T’ve got a feast for a king. — All these fighting men going up 
and down the Valley are going to eat you out of house and home. — 
I got some pay two months ago, and I’ve enough left to make it 
fairer — ” 

He drew out a Confederate note. The woman on the doorstep 
looked at it admiringly, and, taking it from him, examined either 
side. ‘“‘They make them pretty as a picture,” she said. “Once’t I 
was in Richmond and saw the Capitol. That’s a good picture of it. 
And that statue of General Washington! — My! his horse’s just 
dancing as they say Ashby’s does to music. One of those bronze 
men around the base is a forbear of mine.’”’ She gave back the note. 
“T had a little mite of real coffee that I’d have liked to give you — 
but it’s all gone. Howsoever, you won’t go hungry with what 
you’ve got. Have you a nice place to sleep in?” 

“The nicest in the world. A bed of oak leaves and a roofall stars.” 

“You could stay here to-night. I’ve got a spare room.” 

“You're just as good as gold,” said Allan. ‘But I want to be 
out where I can hear the news. I’m a scout, you see.” 

“T thought that, watching you come up the path. We’re learn- 
ing fast. Used to be I just thought a soldier was a soldier! I never 
thought of there being different kinds. Do you think the army’ll 
come this way ?” 

“T should n’t be surprised,” said Allan. “Indeed, I’m rather ex- 
pecting it. But you never know. How many of your people are 
insite 


248 THE LONG ROLL 


“A lot of cousins. But my sons are with Johnston. Richmond’s 
more ’n a hundred miles away, I reckon, but all last night I thought 
I heard the cannon. Well, good-bye! I’m mighty glad to see you 
all again in the Valley. Be sure to come back for your breakfast — 
and if the army passes I’ve got enough for one or two besides. 
Good-bye — God bless you.” 

Allan left behind the small brick farmhouse, stopped for a drink 
at the spring, then climbed a rail fence and made across a rolling 
field of bright green clover to a width of blossoming woods, beyond 
which ran the Mt. Solon and Bridgewater road. From the forest 
issued a curl of blue vapour and a smell of wood smoke. The scout, 
entering, found a cheerful, unnecessarily large fire. Stretched 
beside it, upon the carpet of last year’s leaves, lay Billy Maydew, 
for whose company he had applied upon quitting, a week before, 
the army between McDowell and Franklin. Allan snuffed the air. 
“You build too big a fire, Billy! ’Tisn’t a good scout’s way of 
doing.” 

Billy laid down horizontally upon the leaves the stick he had 
been whittling. ‘Thar ain’t anybody but home folks to smell it. 
Did n’t we see Ashby on the black stallion draw a line like that 
thar stick across the Valley with a picket post for every knot?”’ He 
sat up. “Did you get anything to eat ?” 

“T certainly did. There surely are good women in the land!” 
Allan disburdened himself. “Rake the coals out and get the 
skillet.” 

Afterwards they lay prone upon the leaves and talked. They 
had much of life in common; they were as at home with each other 
as two squirrels frequenting the same tree. Now, as they lay be- 
neath two clouds from two briar-roots, they dwelt for some time 
upon Thunder Run, then from that delectable region turned to the 
here and now. Allan had taught Billy, finding him a most unsatis- 
factory pupil. Billy had in those days acquired little book learning, 
but a very real respect for the blond giant now lying opposite to 
him. Since coming to the army he had been led to deplore his de- 
ficiencies, and, a week ago, he had suggested to Allan that in the 
interim of active scouting the latter should continue his education. 
“When thar air a chance I want to swap into the artillery. Three 
bands of red thar,’’ he drew a long finger across his sleeve, ‘‘air my 


THE FLOWERING WOOD 249 


ambition. I reckon then Christianna and all the Thunder Run girls 
would stop saying ‘Billy.’ They’d say ‘Sergeant Maydew.’ An 
artillery sergeant’s got to be head in ciphering, and he’s got to be 
able to read words of mor’n one — one —”’ 

“Syllable.” 

“That’s it. Now they are n’t any printed books hereabouts, but 
you’ve got it all in your head —” 

“T can’t teach you much,” Allan had said soberly, “‘ whispering 
under bushes and listening for Schenck’s cavalry! We might do 
something, though. You were an awful poor speller. Spell ‘ser- 
geant ’— now ‘ordnance’ — now ‘ammunition’ — ‘battery’ — ‘cais- 
son’ — ‘ Howitzer’ — ‘ Napoleon’ —‘ Tredegar’ — ‘limber’ —‘ trail’ 
— ‘cannon-powder’ — ” 

In the week Billy had made progress — more progress than in a 
session on Thunder Run. Now, lying in the woods a little west of 
Mt. Solon, waiting for the army moving back to the Valley, this 
time from the west, from the Allegheny fastnesses, he accomplished 
with éclat some oral arithmetic— “If two Yankee Parrotts are 
fired every eight minutes, and in our battery we serve the howitzer 
every nine minutes, the Napoleon every ten, the two six-pounders 
every eleven, and if the Yankees limber up and leave at the end of 
an hour, how many shells will have been thrown?” — “If itisa 
hundred and ten miles from Harrisonburg to the Potomac, and if 
Old Jack’s foot cavalry advances twenty-two miles a day, and if we 
lay off a day for a battle, and if we have three skirmishes each 
occupying two hours, and if Banks makes a stand of half a day at 
Winchester, and if Frémont executes a flank movement and delays 
us six hours, just how long will it be before Old Jack pushes Banks 
into the Potomac?” — “Tf Company A had ninety men when it 
started (‘thar war a full hundred’) and five men died of measles 
and pneumonia (‘’t were six’), and if we recruited three at Falling 
Springs, and six were killed at Manassas and sixteen wounded, half 
of whom never came back, and we got twelve recruits at Centre- 
ville and seven more at Winchester, and if five straggled on the 
Bath and Romney trip and were never heard of more, and if five 
were killed at Kernstown and a dozen are still in the hospital, and 
if ten more recruits came in at Rude’s Hill and if we left four sick at 
Magaheysville, and if we lost none at McDowell, not being engaged, 


250 THE LONG ROLL 


but two in a skirmish since, and if Steve Dagg straggled three times 
but was brought back and tried to desert twice but never got any 
further than the guardhouse — how many men are in Company 
A?” — “Tf” — this was Billy’s — “if I have any luck in the next 
battle, and if I air found to have a speaking acquaintance with 
every damned thousand-legged word the captain asks me about, 
and I get to be a sergeant, and I air swapped into the artillery, and 
thar’s a big fight, and my battery and Company A are near, and 
Sergeant Mathew Coffin gets into trouble right next door to me, 
and he cried out a hundred times (lying right thar in the zone of 
fire), ‘Boys, come take me out of hell!’ and the company all was 
forced back, and all the gunners, and I was left thar serving my 
gun, just as pretty and straight, and he cried out anoth’r hundred 
times, ‘ Billy Maydew, come pick me up and carry me out of hell’ — 
and I just served on a hundred times, only looking at him every time 
the gun thundered and I straightened up —” 

“For shame!” cried Allan. “I’ve heard Steve Dagg say some- 
thing like that about Richard Cleave.” Billy sat up indignant. 
“Tt air not like that at all! The major air what he is, and Steve 
Dagg air what he is! Sergeant Mathew Coffin air what somebody or 
other called somebody else in that thar old history book you used 
to make us learn! He air ‘a petty tyrant.’ He air that, and Thun- 
der Run don’t like that kind. He air not going to tyrannize much 
longer over Billy Maydew. And don’t you be comparing me to 
Steve Dagg. I ain’t like that, and I never was.” 

He lay prone again, insulted, and would not go on with the lesson. 
Allan took it calmly, made a placating remark or two, and lapsed 
into a friendly silence. It was pleasant in the woods, where the 
birds flitted to and fro, and the pink honeysuckle grew around, 
and from a safe distance a chipmunk daintily watched the in- 
truders. The scout lay, drowsily happy, the sunshine making spun 
gold of his hair and beard, his carbine resting near. Back on 
Thunder Run, at the moment, Christianna in her pink sunbonnet, 
a pansy from the tollgate at her throat, rested upon her hoe in the 
garden she was making and looked out over the great sea of moun- 
tains visible from the Thunder Run eyrie. Shadows of clouds 
moved over them; then the sun shone out and they lay beneath in 
an amethystine dream; Christianna had had her dream the night 


THE FLOWERING WOOD 2651 


before. In her sleep she had come upon a dark pool beneath alders, 
and she had knelt upon the black bank and plunged her arms to the 
shoulders into the water. It seemed in her dream that there was 
something at the bottom that she wanted — a breastpin or a piece 
of money. And she had drawn up something that weighed heavily 
and filled her arms. When she had lifted it halfway out of the water 
the moon came out, and it was Allan Gold. She stood now in her 
steep mountain garden bordered with phlox and larkspur and looked 
far out over the long and many ridges. She knew in which general 
direction to look, and with her mind’s eye she tried to see the fight- 
ing men, the fighting men; and then she shook her head and bent 
to her hoeing — far back and high up on Thunder Run. 

Thirty leagues away, in the flowering wood by the Mt. Solon 
road Allan sat up. “I was nearly asleep,” he said, “‘back on the 
mountain-side above Thunder Run.” He listened. “‘Horses’ hoofs 
—a squad at a trot, coming east! some of Ashby’s of course, but 
you stay here and put earth on the fire while I take a look.” 
Rifle in hand, he threaded the thick undergrowth between the camp 
and the road. 

It was late in the afternoon, but the road lay yet in sunshine 
between the clover and the wheat, the bloomy orchards and the 
woods of May. Allan’s precautions had been largely instinctive; 
there were no Federals, he had reason to be sure, south of Stras- 
burg. He looked to see some changing picket post of Ashby’s. But 
the five horsemen who came in sight, three riding abreast, two a 
little behind, had not a Valley air. “Tidewater men,” said Allan 
to himself. “How far is it to Swift Run Gap? Should n’t wonder 
if General Ewell —”’ 

A minute later the party came in line with the woods. Allan, 
after another deliberate look, stepped from behind a flowering 
thorn. The party drew up. “Good-afternoon, my man,” said the 
stars and wreath in the centre in a high, piping voice. “Alone, are 
you? — Ain’t straggling, I hope? Far too many stragglers — curse 
of this service — civilians turned soldiers and all that. What’s 
that? You know him, Stafford? One of General Jackson’s scouts? 
— Then do you know, pray, where is General Jackson? for, by God, 
I don’t!” 

“I came across country myself to-day, sir —I and a boy that’s 


259 THE LONG ROLL 


with me. We’ve been ahead with Ashby, fending off Frémont. Gen- 
eral Jackson is marching very rapidly, and I expect him to-night.” 

‘“‘Where’s he going, then?” 

“T have n’t the least idea, sir.” 

“Well,” piped Ewell, “I’ll be glad to see him. God knows, 
I don’t know what I’m to do! Am I to strengthen Johnston at 
Richmond? Am I to cross into the Valley — by God, it’s lovely! — 
and reinforce Jackson? Damn it, gentlemen, I’m a major-general on 
a seesaw! Richmond in danger— Valley in danger. ‘Better come 
to me!’ says Johnston. Quite right! He needs every man. ‘Better 
stay with Jackson,’ says Lee. Quite right again! Old Jackson has 
three armies before him and only a handful. ‘Better gallop across 
and find out the crazy man’s own mind,’ says the major-general in 
the middle.”” He turned with the suddenness of a bird to Allan. 
“By God, I’m hungry as a coyote! Have you got anything to eat?”’ 

“I’ve some bread and bacon and a few eggs and half a pot of 
apple butter and a piece of honeycomb, sir —”’ 

Ewell dismounted. “ You’re the foster brother I’ve been in search 
of for thirty-five years! Maury and John, it sounds as though there 
were enough for four. Deane and Edmondson, you ride on to that 
mill I see in front of us, and ask if the folks won’t give you supper. 
We'll pick you up in an hour or so. Now, my friend in need, 
we’ll build a fire and if you’ve got a skillet I’ll show you how an 
omelette ought to be made and generally is n’t!”’ 

Within the covert Billy made up the fire again, and General 
Ewell, beneath the amused eyes of his aides, sliced bacon, broke 
eggs into the skillet and produced an omelette which was a triumph. 
He was, in truth, a master cook — and everything was good and 
savoury — and the trio was very hungry. Ewell had cigars, and 
smoked them like a Spaniard — generous, too — giving freely to 
the others. As often as it burned low Billy threw dried sticks upon 
the fire. The evening was cool, the shadows advancing; the crack- 
ling light and warmth grateful enough. The newcomers asked 
questions. They were eager to know —all the country was keen-set 
to know — eye-witnesses of events were duly appreciated. The 
scout had been at McDowell ? 

“Yes, but not in the battle, the Stonewall Brigade not being 
engaged. 12th Georgia did best — and the 44th Virginia. rath 


THE FLOWERING WOOD Ee 


Georgia held the crest. There was one man, just a boy like Billy 
there (‘I’m eighteen!’ from Billy) — could n’t anybody keep him 
back, behind the rise where our troops were lying down. ‘We did n’t 
come all this way to hide from Yankees,’ he cried, and he rushed out 
and down upon them — poor fellow!” 

“That’s the spirit. In the morning you followed on?” 

“Yes, but Milroy and Schenck did not do badly. That was a good 
fetch of theirs — firing the forest! Everywhere a great murk with 
tongues of flame — smoke in nostril and eyes and the wind blowing 
fast. It looked like the end of the world. Old Jack — beg pardon, 
sir, General Jackson — General Jackson could n’t but smile, it was 
such excellent tactics. We drew off at last, near Franklin, and the 
army went into camp for a bit. Billy and I have been with a 
squadron of Ashby’s.” 

“Keeping Frémont back ?” 

“Yes. General Jackson wanted the passes blocked. We did it 
pretty thoroughly.” 

“ec How? 3 

“Burned all the bridges; cut down trees — in one place a mile 
of them — and made abatis, toppled boulders over the cliffs and 
choked the roads. If Frémont wants to get through he’ll have to 
go round Robin Hood’s Barn to do it! He’s out of the counting for 
awhile, I reckon. At least he won’t interfere with our communica- 
tions. Ashby has three companies toward the mountains. He’s 
picketed the Valley straight across below Woodstock. Banks can’t 
get even a spy through from Strasburg. I’ve heard an officer say — 
you know him, Major Stafford — Major Cleave — I’ve heard him 
say that General Jackson uses cavalry as Napoleon did and as no 
one has done since.” 

Ewell lit another cigar. “Well, I’m free to confess that old Jack- 
son is n’t as crazy as an idiot called Dick Ewell thought him! As 
Milton says, ‘There’s method in his madness’ — Shakespeare, was 
it, Morris? Don’t read much out on the plains.” 

The younger aide had been gleeful throughout the recital. 
“Stonewall’s a good name, by George! but, by George! they ought 
to call him the Artful Dodger —”’ 

Maury Stafford burst into laughter. “By Heaven. Morris, you’d 
better tell him that! Have you ever seen him?” 


254 THE LONG ROLL 


“No. They say he’s real pious and as simple as they make them 
— but Lord! there has n’t been anything simple about his late pro- 
ceedings.” 

Stafford laughed again. ‘Religious as Cromwell, and artless as 
Macchiavelli! Begins his orders with an honourable mention of 
God, closes them with ‘Put all deserters in irons,’ and in between 
gives points to Reynard the Fox —” 

Ewell took his cigar from his lips. ‘Don’t be so damned sarcastic, 
Maury! It’s worse than drink — Well, Deane?” . 

One of his troopers had appeared. ‘A courier has arrived, gen- 
eral, with a letter from General Jackson. I left him at the mill and 
came back to report. There’s a nice little office there with a light 
and writing materials.” 

Dusk filled the forest, the night came, and the stars shone be- 
tween the branches. A large white moon uprose and made the 
neighbouring road a milky ribbon stretched east and west. A 
zephyr just stirred the myriad leaves. Somewhere, deeper in the 
woods, an owl hooted at intervals, very solemnly. Billy heaped 
wood upon the fire, laid his gun carefully, just so, stretched himself 
beside it and in three minutes reached the deepest basin of sleep. 
Allan sat with his back to the hickory, and the firelight falling upon 
the leaves of a book he had borrowed from some student in the 
ranks. It was a volume of Shelley, and the young man read with 
serious appreciation. He was a lover of poetry, and he was glad to 
meet with this poet whose works he had not been able as yet to put 
upon his book-shelf, back in the little room, under the eaves of the 
tollgate. He read on, bent forward, the firelight upon his ample 
frame, gold of hair and beard, and barrel of the musket lying on 
the leaves beside him. 

O Love! who bewailest 
The frailty of all things here, 


Why choose you the frailest 
For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? 


Allan made the fire yet brighter, listened a moment to the hooting 
of the owl, then read on: — 
Its passions will rock thee 


As the storms rock the ravens on high; 
Bright reason will mock thee — 


2 PLOW ERING -\VOOD acc 


He ceased to read, turning his head, for he heard a horse upon the 
road, coming from the direction of the mill. It came slowly, with 
much of weariness in the very hoof sounds, then left the road for 
the woodside and stopped. Ensued a pause while the rider fas- 
tened it to some sapling, then, through the bushes, the former came 
toward the camp-fire. He proved to be Maury Stafford. ‘‘The 
courier says General Jackson will reach Mt. Solon about midnight. 
General Ewell is getting an hour’s sleep at the mill. Iam not sleepy 
and your fire is attractive. May I keep you company for awhile?”’ 
Allan was entirely hospitable. “Certainly, sir! Spread your 

cloak just there — the wind will blow the smoke the other way. 
Well, we’ll all be glad to see the army!” 
“What are you reading?”’ 
Allan showed him. ‘“‘Humph! — 

Its passions will rock thee 

As the storms rock the ravens on high; 

Bright reason will mock thee — 


Well — we all know the man was a seer.” 

He laid the book down upon the grey cloak lined with red and sat 
with his chin in his hand, staring at the fire. Some moments elapsed 
before he spoke; then, “‘ You have known Richard Cleave for a long 
time?” 

“Ves. Ever since we were both younger than we are now. I 
like him better than any one I know —and I think he’s fond of me.” 

“He seems to have warm friends.’ 

“He has. He’s true as steel, and big-minded. He’s strong- 
thewed — in and out.” 

‘A little clumsily simple sometimes, do you not think? Lawyer 
and soldier grafted on Piers Ploughman, and the seams not well 
hidden? I would say there’s a lack of grace —” 

“T have not noticed it,’”’ said Allan dryly. ‘“He’s a very good 
leader.” 

The other smiled, though only with the lips. “Oh, I am not 
decrying him! Why should I? I have heard excellent things of him. 
He is a favourite, is he not, with General Jackson?” 

“T don’t think that General Jackson has favourites.” 

“At least, he is no longer in disfavour. I remember toward the 
close of the Romney expedition —”’ 


256 THE LONG ROLL 


“Oh, that!” said Allan, “that was nothing.” He put down his 
pipe. ‘Let me see if I can explain to you the ways of this army. 
You don’t know General Jackson as we do, who have been with him 
ever since a year ago and Harper’s Ferry! In any number of things 
he’s as gentle as a woman; in a few others he — isn’t. In some 
things he’s like iron. He’s rigid in his discipline, and he’ll tolerate 
no shade of insubordination, or disobedience, or neglect of duty. 
He’s got the defect of his quality, and sometimes he’ll see those 
things where they are not. He does n’t understand making allow- 
ances or forgiving. He’ll rebuke a man in general orders, hold him 
up — if he’s an officer — before the troops, and all for something 
that another general would hardly notice! He’ll make an officer 
march without his sword for whole days in the rear of his regiment, 
and all for something that just a reprimand would have done for! 
As you say, he made the very man we’re talking of do that from 
Bloomery Gap to Romney — and nobody ever knew why. Just 
the other day there were some poor fools of twelve-month men in 
one of our regiments who concluded they did n’t want to reénlist. 
They said they’d go home and cried out for their discharge. And 
they had forgotten all about the conscription act that Congress had 
just passed. So, when the discharge was refused they got dreadfully 
angry, and threw down their arms. The colonel went to the gen- 
eral, and the general almost put him under arrest. ‘Why does 
Colonel Grigsby come to me to learn how to deal with mutineers? 
Shoot them where they stand.’ — Kernstown, too. There’s hardly 
a man of the Stonewall that does n’t think General Garnett justi- 
fied in ordering that retreat, and yet look at Garnett! Under ar- 
rest, and the commanding general preferring charges against him! 
Says he did not wait for orders, lost the battle and so on. With 
Garnett it is a deadly serious matter — rank and fame and name for 
courage all in peril —”’ 

“Tsee. But with Richard Cleave it was not serious?” 

“Not in the least. These smaller arrests and censures — not 
even'the best can avoid them. I should n’t think they were pleas- 
ant, for sometimes they are mentioned in reports, and sometimes 
they get home to the womenfolk. But his officers understand him 
by now, and they keep good discipline, and they had rather be led 
by Stonewall Jackson than by an easier man. As for Richard 


THE FLOWERING WOOD a7 


Cleave, I was with him on the march to McDowell and he looked 
a happy man.” 

At 

The conversation dropped. The scout, having said his say, easily 
relapsed into silence. His visitor, half reclining upon his cloak be- 
neath an old, gnarled tree, was still. The firelight played strangely 
over his face, for now it seemed the face of one man, now that of 
another. In the one aspect he looked intent, as though in his mind 
he mapped a course. In the other he showed only weariness, dashed 
with something tragic — a handsome, brooding, melancholy face. 
They stayed like this for some time, the fire burning before them, 
the moon flooding the forest, the owl hooting from his hole in some 
decaying tree. 

At last, however, another sound intruded, a very low, subdued 
sound like a distant ground swell or like thunder without resonance. 
It grew; dull yet, it became deep. Allan knocked the ashes from 
his pipe. “That is a sound,” he said, “that when you have once 
heard you don’t forget. The army’s coming.”’ 

Stafford rose. ‘I must get back to General Ewell! Thank you, 
Gold, for your hospitality.” 

“Not at all! Not at all!” said Allan heartily. “I am glad that I 
could put that matter straight for you. It would blight like black 
frost to have Stonewall Jackson’s hand and mind set against you — 
and Richard Cleave is not the least in that predicament!”’ 

The Army of the Valley, advance and main column, and rear- 
guard, artillery and wagon train, came down the moon-lighted road, 
having marched twenty miles since high noon. On either hand 
stretched pleasant pastures, a running stream, fair woods. Company 
by company the men left the road, were halted, stacked arms, broke 
ranks. Cessation from motion was sweet, sweet the feel of turf 
beneath their feet. They had had supper three hours before; now 
they wanted sleep, and without much previous ado they lay down 
and took it — Stonewall Jackson’s “‘ foot cavalry” sleeping under the 
round moon, by Mt. Solon. 

At the mill there was a meeting and a conference. A figure in an 
old cloak and a shabby forage cap dismounted, ungracefully enough, 
from a tired nag, and crossed the uncovered porch to the wide mill 
door. There he was met by his future trusty and trusted lieutenant 


258 THE LONG ROLL 


— ‘‘dear Dick Ewell.’ Jackson’s greeting was simple to baldness. 
Ewell’s had the precision of a captain of dragoons. Together they 
entered the small mill office, where the aides placed lights and writ- 
ing materials, then withdrew. The generals sat down, one on this 
side of the deal table, one on that. Jackson took from his pocket a 
lemon, very deliberately opened a knife, and, cutting the fruit in 
two, put one half of the sour treasure to his lips. Ewell fidgeted, 
then, as the other sucked on, determined to set the ball rolling. 
“Damn me, general! if Tam not glad to have the pleasure at 
last — 

Jackson sent across the table a grey-blue glance, then gently put 
down one half of the lemon and took up the other. ‘‘ Why the deuce 
should he look at me in that damned reproachful fashion?” thought 
Ewell. He made another start. ‘‘There’s a damned criss-cross of 
advices from Richmond. I hate uncertainty like the devil, and so 
I thought I’d ride across —” 

“General Ewell,” said Jackson gently, “ you will oblige me by 
not swearing. Profanity, sir, is most distasteful to me. Now, you 
rode across?”’ 

Ewell swallowed. ‘‘ Rode across — rode across — I rode across, 
sir, from Swift Run Gap, and I brought with me two late dispatches 
from General Johnston and General Lee. I thought some expression, 
perhaps, to them of your opinion — following the late victory and 
all —” 

The other took and read, laid down the dispatches and applied 
himself to hislemon. Presently. “‘I will telegraph to-night to Gen- 
eral Johnston and General Lee. I shall advise that you enter the 
Valley as first intended. As for Richmond — we may best serve 
Richmond by threatening Washington.” 

“Threatening Washington?” 

“At present you are in my district and form part of my command. 
You will at once move your troops forward a day’s march. Upon 
receipt of advices from General Johnston and General Lee — and if 
they are of the tenour I expect — you will move with promptness 
to Luray.” 

“And then?” 

“With promptness to Luray. I uonely value swiftness of move- 
ment.” 


THE FLOWERING WOOD 259 


“T understand that, sir. Double the distance in half the time.”’ 

“Good! When instructions are given, it is desirable that those 
instructions be followed. I assume the responsibility of giving the 
proper instructions.” 

“T understand, general. Obey and ask no questions.”’ 

“Just so. Be careful of your ammunition wagons, but otherwise 
as little impedimenta as possible.” 

“T understand, sir. The road to glory cannot be followed with 
much baggage.” 

Jackson put out his long arm, and gently touched the other’s 
hand. “Good! I should be surprised if we didn’t get on very 
well together. Now I will write a telegram to General Lee and 
then you shall get back to Swift Run Gap. The fewer hours a 
general is away from his troops the better.’’ He rose and opened 
the door. ‘Lieutenant Meade!’ The aide appeared. “‘Send mea 
courier — the one with the freshest horse. Order General Ewell’s 
horses to be saddled.” 

This was the seventeenth. Two days later the Army of the 
Valley, moving down the Valley pike in a beautiful confidence that 
it was hurling itself against Banks at Strasburg, swerved to the east 
about New Market, with a suddenness that made it dizzy. Straight 
across its path now ran the strange and bold wall of the Massanut- 
tons, architectural freak of Nature’s, planted midway of the smiling 
Valley. The army groaned. “Always climbing mountains! This 
time to-morrow, I reckon, we’ll climb it back again. Nothing over 
on the other side but the Luray Valley!” 

Up and up went the army, through luxuriant forests where the 
laurel was in bloom, by the cool dash of mountain waters, past one- 
time haunts of stag and doe, through fern, over pine needles, under 
azure sky, — then down it sank, long winding after winding, moss 
and fern and richest forest, here velvet shadow, there highest 
light, down and down to the lovely Luray Valley, to the crossing 
of the Shenandoah, to green meadows and the bugles ringing 
“halt”! 

How short the time between tattoo and reveille! The dawn was 
rosy, still, not cold, the river running near, the men with leave to 
rid themselves of the dust of yesterday’s long march. In they 
plunged, all along the south fork of the Shenandoah, into the cool 


260 THE LONG ROLL 


and wholesome flood. There were laughters, shoutings, games of 
dolphins. Then out they came, and while they cooked their break- 
fasts they heard the drums and fifes of Ewell’s eight thousand, 
marching down from Conrad’s Store. 

The night before at Washington, where there was much security 
and much triumph over the certain-to-occur-soon-if-not-already-oc- 
curred Fall of Richmond, the Secretary of War received a dispatch 
from General Banks at Strasburg in the Valley of Virginia, thirty 
miles from Winchester. 


“My force at Strasburg is 4476 infantry, two brigades; 1600 
cavalry, ro Parrott guns and 6 smooth-bore pieces. I have on the 
Manassas Gap Railroad, between Strasburg and Manassas, 2500 
infantry, 6 companies cavalry, and 6 pieces artillery. There are 
5 companies cavalry, First Maine, near Strasburg. Of the enemy 
I received information last night, direct from New Market, that 
Jackson has returned to within 8 miles of Harrisonburg, west. 
I have no doubt that Jackson’s force is near Harrisonburg, and that 
Ewell still remains at Swift Run Gap. I shall communicate more 
at length the condition of affairs and the probable plans of the 
enemy.” 


In pursuance of his promise General Banks wrote at length from 
Strasburg, the evening of the 22d: — 


“Srr. The return of the rebel forces of General Jackson to the 
Valley after his forced march against Generals Milroy and Schenck 
increases my anxiety for the safety of the position I occupy. .. . 
That he has returned there can be no doubt. . . . From all the in- 
formation I can gather — and I do not wish to excite alarm unne- 
cessarily — I am compelled to believe that he meditates attack here. 
I regard it as certain that he will move north as far as New Market, 
a position which . . . enables him also to codperate with General 
Ewell, who is still at Swift Run Gap. . . . Once at New Market 
they are within twenty-five miles of Strasburg. . . . I have for- 
borne until the last moment to make this representation, well know- 
ing how injurious to the public service unfounded alarms be- 
COME ce) 


THE FLOWERING WOOD 261 


The general signed and sent his letter. Standing for a moment, in 
the cool of the evening, at the door of headquarters, he looked toward 
the east where the first stars were shining. Fourteen miles over 
there was his strongest outpost, the village of Front Royal occupied 
by Colonel Kenly with a thousand men and two guns. The general 
could not see the place; it lay between the Massanuttons and the 
Blue Ridge, but it was in his mind. He spoke to an aide. “To- 
morrow I think I will recall Kenly and send him down the pike to 
develop the force of the enemy.” 

The small town of Strasburg pulsed with flaring lights and with 
the manifold sounds of the encamped army. Sutlers showed their 
wares, guard details went by, cavalrymen clanked their spurs 
through the streets, laughter and talk rang through the place. A 
company of strolling players had come down from the North, making 
its way from Washington to Harper’s Ferry, held by three thousand 
Federals; from Harper’s Ferry to Winchester, held by fifteen hun- 
dred; and from Winchester to Strasburg. The actors had a canvas 
booth, where by guttering candles and to the sound of squeaking 
fiddles they gave their lurid play of the night, and they played toa 
crowded house. Elsewhere there was gambling, elsewhere praying, 
elsewhere braggarts spoke of Ajax exploits, elsewhere there was 
moaning and tossing in the hospitals, elsewhere some private, raised 
above the heads of his fellows, read aloud the Northern papers. 
McClellan has one hundred and twelve thousand men. Yesterday his 
advance reached the White House on the Pamunkey. McDowell has 
forty thousand men, and ai last advice was but a few marches from the 
treasonable capital. Our gunboats are hurrying up the James. Pre- 
sumably at the very hour this goes to press Richmond is fallen. 


Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, 
Fallen from her high estate, 
And weltering in her blood. 


Elsewhere brave, true, and simple men attended to their duties, 
wrote their letters home, and, going their rounds or walking their 
beats, looked upward to the silver stars. They looked at the stars 
in the west, over the Alleghenies where Frémont, where Milroy and 
Schenck should be; and at those in the south, over the long leagues of 
the great Valley, over Harrisonburg, somewhere the other side of 


262 THE LONG ROLL 


which Stonewall Jackson must be; and at those in the east, over the 
Massanuttons, with the Blue Ridge beyond, and Front Royal in 
between, where Colonel Kenly was; and at the bright stars in the 
North, over home, over Connecticut and Pennsylvania and Massa- 
chusetts, over Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine. 

They who watched the stars from Strasburg dwelt least of all, 
perhaps, upon the stars in the east. Yet under those lay that night, 
ten miles from Front Royal, Stonewall Jackson and seventeen thou- 
sand men. : 


CHAPTER xx 


FRONT ROYAL 


of the 65th thrown out as skirmishers, entered the band of forest 

lying between the Blue Ridge and Front Royal. The day was 
hot, the odour of the pines strong and heady; high in heaven, in a 
still and intense blue, the buzzards were slowly sailing. A long, thin 
line of picked men, keen, watchful, the reserve a hundred yards or 
two behind, the skirmishers moved forward over a rough cart track 
and over the opposing banks. Each man stepped lightly as a cat, 
each held his gun in the fashion most convenient to himself, each 
meant to do good hunting. Ahead was a thicker belt of trees, and 
beyond that a gleam of sky, a promise of a clearing. Suddenly, out 
of this blue space, rose the neigh of a horse. 

The skirmishers halted beneath the trees. The men waited, bent 
forward, holding breath, recognizing the pause on the rim of action, 
the moment before the moment. The clearing appeared to be 
several hundred yards away. Back from it, upon the idle air, floated 
loud and careless talking, then laughter. Allan Gold came out of the 
thicker wood, moved, a tawny shadow, across the moss and reported 
to Cleave. “Two companies, sir — infantry — scattered along a 
little branch. Arms stacked.” 

The line entered the wood, the laughter and talking before it 
growing louder. Each grey marksman twitched his cartridge box in 
place, glanced at his musket, glanced toward his immediate officer. 
Across the intervals ran an indefinable spark, a bracing, a tension. 
Some of the men moistened their lips, one or two uttered a little sigh, 
the hearts of all beat faster. The step had quickened. The trees 
grew more thinly, came down to a mere bordering fringe of sumach. 
Cleave motioned to the bugler; the latter raised the bugle to his 
lips. Forward !—Commence— Firing! The two companies in blue, 
marched down that morning superfluously to picket a region where 
was no danger, received that blast and had their moment of stupour. 


I: the hot, bright morning Cleave, commanding four companies 


264 THE LONG ROLL 


Laughter died suddenly. A clock might have ticked twice while 
they sat or stood as though that were all there was to do. The 
woods blazed, a long crackle of musketry broke the spell. A blue 
soldier pitched forward, lay with his head in the water. Another, 
seated in the shade, his back to a sugar maple, never more of his own 
motion left that resting place; a third, undressing for a bath, ran 
when the others ran, but haltingly, a red mark upon his naked thigh. 
All ran now, ran with cries and oaths toward the stacked rifles. Ere 
they could snatch the guns, drop upon their knees, aim at the shaken 
sumach bushes and fire, came a second blaze and rattle and a leaden 
hail. 

Out of the wood burst the long skirmish line. It yelled; it gave 
the ‘‘rebel yell.” It rushed on, firing as it came. It leaped the 
stream, it swallowed up the verdant mead, it came on, each of its 
units yelling death, to envelop the luckless two companies. One of 
these was very near at hand, the other, for the moment more for- 
tunate, a little way down the stream, near the Front Royal road. 
Cleave reached, a grey brand, the foremost of the two. ‘Sur- 
render!” 

The blue captain’s sword lay with other paraphernalia on the 
grass beneath the trees, but he signified assent to the inevitable. 
The reserve, hurrying down from the wood, took the captured in 
charge. The attack swept on, tearing across the meadow to the 
Front Royal road, where the second company had made a moment’s 
stand, as brave as futile. It fired two rounds, then broke and tore 
down the dusty road or through the bordering fields toward Front 
Royal. Cleave and his skirmishers gained. They were mountain 
men, long of limb; they went like Greek runners, and they tossed 
before them round messengers of death. The greater number of blue 
soldiers, exhausted, slackened in their pace, halted, threw down 
their arms. Presently, trailing their feet, they returned to the 
streamlet and their companions in misfortune. 

The grey swept on, near now to Front Royal; before them a few 
blue fugitives, centre of a swiftly moving cloud of dust, a cloud into 
which the Thunder Run men fired at short intervals. Behind them 
they heard the tramp of the army. The Louisiana Brigade, leading, 
was coming at a double-quick. On a parallel road to the left a dust 
cloud and dull thunder proclaimed a battery, making for the front. 


FRONT ROYAL 265 


Out of the wood which the skirmishers had left came like a whirl- 
wind the 65th Virginia, Jackson riding with Flournoy at the head. 

Little Sorrel swerved toward the skirmishers and paused a mo- 
ment abreast of Cleave. Jackson spoke from the saddle. “How 
many?” 

“Two companies, sir. Several killed, the rest prisoners, save six 
or eight who will reach the town.” 

‘‘Good! Press on. If they open with artillery, get under cover 
until our guns are placed.”’ He jerked his hand into the air and rode 
on, galloping stiffly, his feet stuck out from the nag’s sides. The 
cavalry disappeared to the right in a storm of yellow dust. 

The village of Front Royal that had been dozing all the summer 
forenoon, woke with a vengeance. Kenly’s camp lay a mile or two 
west, but in the town was quartered a company or so. Soldiers off 
duty were lounging on the shady side of the village street, missing 
the larger delights of Strasburg, wondering if Richmond had fallen 
and where was Stonewall Jackson, when the fracas, a mile away, 
broke upon their ears. Secure indolence woke with a start. Front 
Royal buzzed like an overturned hive. In the camp beyond the 
town bugles blared and the long roll was furiously beaten. The loung- 
ing soldiers jerked up their muskets; others poured out of houses 
where they had been billeted. All put their legs to good use, down 
the road, back to the camp! Out, too, came the village people, 
though not to flee the village. In an instant men and women were in 
street or porch or yard, laughing, crying, hurrahing, clapping hands, 
waving anything that might serve as a welcoming banner. “Stone- 
wall Jackson! It’s Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Bless the Lord, 
O my soul! —Can’t you all stop and tell a body? — No; you 
can’t, of course. Go along, and God bless you! — Their camp’s 
this side the North Fork — about a thousand of them. — Guns? 
Yes, they’ve got two guns. Cavalry? No, no cavalry. — Don’t let 
them get away! If they fall back they’ll try to burn the bridges. 
Don’t let them do that. The North Fork’s awful rough and swollen. 
It’ll be hard to get across. — Yes, the railroad bridge and the 
wagon bridge. I can’t keep up with you any longer. I ain’t as 
young as I once was. You’re welcome, sir.”’ 

Cleave and his men came out of the village street at a run. 
Before them stretched level fields, gold with sunshine and with 


266 THE LONG ROLL 


blossoming mustard, crossed and cumbered with numerous rai! 
fences. Beyond these, from behind rolling ground lightly wooded, 
rang a great noise of preparation, drums, trumpets, confused voices. 
As the skirmishers poured into the open and again deployed, a can- 
non planted on a knoll ahead spoke with vehemence. The shell that 
it sent struck the road just in front of the grey, exploded, fright- 
fully tore a man’s arm and covered all with a dun mantle of dust. 
Another followed, digging up the earth in the field, uprooting and 
ruining clover and mustard. A third burst overhead. A stone wall, 
overtopped by rusty cedars, ran at right angles with the road. To 
this cover Cleave brought the men, and they lay behind it panting, 
welcoming the moment’s rest and shelter, waiting for the battery 
straining across the fields. The Louisianians, led by Taylor, were 
pouring through the village — Ewell was behind — Jackson and the 
cavalry had quite disappeared. 

Lying in the shadow of the wall, waiting for the order forward, 
Cleave suddenly saw again and plainly what at the moment he had 
seen without noting — Stafford’s face, very handsome beneath soft 
hat and plume, riding with the 6th. It came now as though between 
eyelid and ball. The eyes, weary and tragic, had rested upon him 
with intentness as he stood and spoke with Jackson. Maury Staf- 
ford — Maury Stafford! Cleave’s hand struck the sun-warmed 
stone impatiently. He was not fond of deep unhappiness — no, not 
even in the face of his foe! Why was it necessary that the man 
should have felt thus, have thought thus, acted thus? The fact that 
he himself could not contemplate without hot anger that other fact 
of Stafford’s thought still dwelling, dwelling upon Judith had made 
him fight with determination any thought of the man at all. He 
could not hurt Judith, thank God! nor make between them more 
misunderstanding and mischief! Then let him go — let him go! with 
his beauty and his fatal look, like a figure out of an old, master can- 
vas! — Cleave wrenched his thought to matters more near at hand. 

The battery first seen and heard was now up. It took position on 
a rise of ground and began firing, but the guns were but smooth-bore 
six-pounders and the ammunition was ghastly bad. The shells ex- 
ploded well before they reached the enemy’s lines. The opposing 
blue battery — Atwell’s — strongly posted and throwing canister 
from ten-pounder Parrotts — might have laughed had there not 


FRONT ROYAL 267 


been — had there not been more and more and yet more of grey 
infantry! Taylor with his Louisianians, the First Maryland, Ewell, 
Winder with the Stonewall, grey, grey, with gleaming steel, with 
glints of red, pouring from the woods, through the fields — the 
Pennsylvanians, working the battery, did not laugh; they were pale, 
perhaps, beneath the powder grime. But pale or sanguine they 
bravely served their guns and threw their canister, well directed, 
against the medizval engines on the opposite knoll. 

Shouting an order, there now galloped to these Jackson’s Chief of 
Artillery, Colonel Crutchfield. The outclassed smooth-bores lim- 
bered up and drew sulkily away; Courtenay’s Battery, including a 
rifled gun, arrived in dust and thunder to take their place. Behind 
came Brockenborough. The reeking battery horses bent to it; the 
drivers yelled. The rumbling wheels, the leaping harness, the dust 
that all raised, made a cortége and a din as of Dis himself. The wheel 
stopped, the men leaped to the ground, the guns were planted, the 
limbers dropped, the horses loosed and taken below the hill. A loud 
cannonade began. 

Behind the screen of smoke, in the level fields, four Louisiana 
regiments formed in line of battle. A fifth moved to the left, its 
purpose to flank the Federal battery. As for the cavalry, it ap- 
peared to have sunk into the earth—and yet, even with the 
thought, out of the blue distance toward McCoy’s Ford, on the 
South Fork arose a tremendous racket! A railway station, Buckton 
— was there, and a telegraph line, and two companies of Pennsyl- 
vania infantry, and two locomotives with steam up. At the moment 
there were also Ashby and the 7th Virginia, bent upon burning the 
railroad bridge, cutting the telegraph, staying the locomotives, and 
capturing the Pennsylvanians. The latter tried to escape by the 
locomotives; tried twice and failed twice. The forming infantry be- 
fore Front Royal knew by the rumpus that Ashby was over there, 
below the Massanuttons. There ran a rumour, too, that the 2d 
Virginia cavalry under Munford was somewhere to the northeast, 
blocking the road to Manassas Gap, closing the steel trap on that 
quarter. The 6th with Jackson remained sunken. 

In the hot sunshine blared the Louisianian trumpets. An aide, 
stretched like an Indian along the neck of his galloping horse, came 
to the skirmishers. “All right, Cleave! Go ahead! The Louisiani- 


268 THE LONG ROLL 


ans are pawing the ground! — Shade of Alexander Hamilton, listen 
to that!” 

“That” was the “ Marseillaise,” grandly played. Tramp, tramp! 
the Louisianians came on to its strains. The skirmish line left the 
sunny stone fence where slender ferns filled the chinks, and lizards 
ran like frightened flames, and brown ants, anxious travellers, sought 
a way home. Cleave, quitting the shadow of a young locust tree, 
touched with his foot a wren’s nest, shaken from the bough above. 
The eggs lay in it, unbroken. He stooped swiftly, caught it up and 
set it on the bough again, then ran on, he and all his men, under a 
storm of shot and shell. 

Kenly, a gallant soldier, caught, through no fault as his, in a 
powerful trap, eee ably. His guns were well fet and 
while they stayed for a moment the Confederate advance, he made 
dispositions for a determined stand. The longer delay here, the 
greater chance at Strasburg! A courier dispatched in hot haste to 
warn the general there encountered and hurried forward a detach- 
ment of the 7th New York Cavalry as well as a small troop of picked 
men, led by a sometime aide of General Banks. These, crossing the 
wagon bridge over the Shenandoah and coming down the road ata 
double, reported to Kenly and were received by the anxious troops 
with cheering. The ground hereabouts was rolling, green eminences 
at all points breaking the view. Kenly used the cavalry skilfully, 
making them appear now here, now there between the hills, to the 
end that to the attackers they might appear a regiment. His guns 
thundered, and his few companies of infantry fired with steadiness, 
greeting with hurrahs every fall of a grey skirmisher. 

But the skirmishers pressed on, and behind them came the 
chanters of the ‘“Marseillaise.”’ Moreover a gasping courier 
brought news to Kenly. “A great force of cavalry, sir — Ashby, I 
reckon, or the devil himself —on the right! If they get to the river 
first —”’ There was small need of further saying. If Ashby or the 
devil got to the river first, then indeed was the trap closed on the 
thousand men! 

Face to the Rear! March! ordered Kenly. Atwell’s Battery 
limbered up in hot haste, turned, and dashed in thunder up the 
read. It must cross the bridge, seize some height, from there 
defend the crossing. Where the battery had been the cavalry now 


FRONT ROYAL 269 


formed the screen, thin enough and ragged, yet menacing the grey 
infantry. 

The grey skirmishers rallied, fixed bayonets and advanced, the 
Louisianians close behind. The blue horsemen attempted a charge, 
an action more bold than wise, they were so small a force. The men 
in grey sprang at the bridles of the foremost, wrapped long mountain 
arms about the riders. Despite sabre, despite pistol, several were 
dragged down, horse and man made captive. The most got back 
to safer ground. Kenly’s bugles rang out again, palpably alarmed, 
shrilly insistent. Horse and foot must get across the Shenandoah or 
there would be the devil to pay! Beside the imperious trumpet came 
something else, an acrid smell and smoke, then a great flame and 
crackle. Torch had been put to the camp; all the Federal tents 
and forage and stores were burning. To the rear! To the rear! 

In the middle of the road, out of one of the scuffling groups, a 
whirling pillar of dust and clamour, sabre strokes, rifle and pistol 
cracks, oaths, cries, plunging of a maddened horse, Cleave saw a 
flushed face lift itself from the ground, a powerful shoulder thrust 
away the surging grey shapes, a sabre flash in the sun, a hand from 
which blood was streaming catch at the horse’s mane. The owner of 
the hand swung himself again into the saddle from which Dave 
Maydew had plucked him. Remounted, he made a downward 
thrust with his sabre. Dave, keeping warily out of reach of the 
horse’s lashing heels, struck up the arm with his bayonet. The sabre 
clattered to the ground; with an oath the man —an officer —drew 
a revolver. The ball whizzed past Cleave’s temple; a second might 
have found his heart but that Allan Gold, entering somehow the 
cleared circle made by the furious horse, hung upon the arm sleeved 
in fine blue cloth, and wrenched the Colt’s from the gauntleted 
hand. Cleave, at the bridle, laughed and took his hands away. 
“Christmas Carols again!” he said. 


God save you, merry gentlemen! 
Let nothing you dismay — 


“Give him way, men! He’s a friend of mine.” 
Marchmont’s horse bounded. ‘“‘ Lieutenant McNeill,” said the 
rider. “TI profess that in all this dust and smoke I did not at first 


270 THE LONG ROLL 


recognize you. I am your obedient servant. If my foe, sir, then I 
dub you my dearest foe! To our next meeting!”’ 

He backed the furious horse, wheeled and was gone like a bolt 
from a catapult toward his broken and retiring troop. As he rode 
he turned in his saddle, raised his cap, and sang, — 


‘“As the Yankees were a-marching, 
They heard the rebel yell — ” 


Close at the heels of Kenly’s whole command poured, resistlessly, 
the skirmish line, the Louisiana troops, the First Maryland. A light 
wind blew before them the dun and rolling smoke from the burning 
camp. For all their haste the men found tongue as they passed that 
dismal pyre. They sniffed the air. ‘Coffee burning! — good Lord, 
ain’t it a sin? — Look at those boxes — shoes as I am a Christian 
man! — And all the wall tents — like ’"Laddin’s palaces! Geewhili- 
kins! what was that? That was oil. There might be gunpowder 
somewhere! Captain, honey, don’t you want us to treble-quick it?” 
They passed the fire and waste and ruin, rounded a curve, and came 
upon the long downward slope to the river. ‘‘Oh, here we are! Thar 
they are! Thar’s the river. Thar’s the Shenandoah! Thar’s the 
covered bridge! They’re on it—they’re halfway over! Their 
guns are over! — We ain’t ever going to let them all get across? — 
Ain’t we going down the hill at them? — Yes. Forward !— Yaaaih! 
— Yaaih! — Yaaaaaaaihh! — Yaaaaaih!— Thar’s the cavalry! 
Thar’s Old Jack!” 

Jackson and the 6th Virginia came at a gallop out of the woods, 
down the eastern bank of the stream. The skirmishers, First Mary- 
land, — Louisiana, — poured down the slope, firing on Kenly as 
they ran. A number of his men dropped, but he was halfway across 
and he pressed on, the New York cavalry and Marchmont’s small 
troop acting as rear guard. The battery was already over. The west- 
ern bank rose steep and high, commanding the eastern. Up this 
strained the guns, were planted, and opened with canister upon 
the swarming grey upon the other shore. Company by company 
Kenly’s infantry got across — got across, and once upon the rising 
ground faced about and opened a determined fire under cover of 
which his cavalry entered the bridge. The last trooper over, his 


FRONT ROYAL 271 


pioneers brought brush and hay, thrust it into the mouth of the 
bridge and set all on fire. 

Jackson was up just in time to witness the burst of flames. He 
turned to the nearest regiment — the 8th Louisiana, Acadians from 
the Attakapas. There was in him no longer any slow stiffness of 
action; his body moved as though every joint were oiled. He looked 
a different creature. He pointed to the railroad bridge just above 
the wagon bridge. “Cross at once on the ties.”” The colonel looked, 
nodded, waved his sword and explained to his Acadians. “ Mes 
enfans! Nous allons traverser le pont ld-bas. En avant!” In column 
of twos he led his men out on the ties of the trestle bridge. Below, 
dark, rapid, cold, rushed the swollen Shenandoah. Musketry and 
artillery, Kenly opened upon them. Many a poor fellow, who until 
this war had never seen a railroad bridge, threw up his arms, stum- 
bled, slipped between the ties, went down into the flood and disap- 
peared. 

Stonewall Jackson continued his orders. “‘Skirmishers forward! 
Clear those combustibles out of the bridge. Cross, Wheat’s Battal- 
ion! First Maryland, follow!’’ He looked from beneath the forage 
cap at the steep opposite shore, from the narrow level at the water’s 
edge to the ridge top held by the Federal guns. Rank by rank on this 
staircase, showed Kenly’s troops, stubbornly firing, trying to break 
the trap. “Artillery’s the need. We must take more of their guns.” 

It was hot work, as the men of the 65th and Wheat’s Tigers 
speedily found, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah! 
One span was all afire. The flooring burned their feet, flames licked 
the wooden sides of the structure, thick, choking smoke canopied the 
rafters. With musket butts the men beat away the planking, hurled 
into the flood below burning scantling and brand, and trampled the 
red out of the charring cross timbers. Some came out of the western 
mouth of the bridge stamping with the pain of burned hands, but 
the point was that they did come out — the four companies of the 
65th, Wheat’s Tigers, the First Maryland. Back to Jackson, how- 
ever, went a messenger. “Not safe, sir, for horse! We broke step 
and got across, but at one place the supports are burned away —” 

“Good! good!” said Jackson. ‘‘We will cross rougher rivers ere 
we are done.”’ He turned to Flournoy’s bugler. “Squadrons. Right 
front into line. March!”’ 


272 THE LONG ROLL 


Kenly, stubbornly firing upon the two columns, that one now 
quitting, with a breath of relief, the railway bridge, and that issuing 
under an arch of smoke from the wagon bridge, was hailed by a 
wild-eyed lieutenant. “Colonel Kenly, sir, look at that!” As he 
spoke, he tried to point, but his hand waved up and down. The 
Shenandoah, below the two bridges, was thick with swimming 
horses. 

Kenly looked, pressed his lips together, opened them and gave 
the order. ‘Face to the rear. Forward. March!” Discretion was at 
last entirely the better part of valour. Strasburg was fourteen miles 
away; over hill and dale rose and fell the road that ran that way. 
Off, off! and some might yet escape — or it might please the gods 
to let him meet with reinforcements! His guns ceased with their 
canister and limbering up thundered away toward the sun, now low 
and red in the heavens. The infantry followed; the small cavalry 
force bringing up the rear, now deployed as skirmishers, now rally- 
ing and threatening the grey footmen. 

The Shenandoah was impetuous, deep, turbid, witn many eddies, 
lifted by the spring rains almost level with its banks. The horses 
liked it not — poor brutes! They shuddered, whinnied, glared with 
distended, bloodshot eyes. Once in, they patiently did their best. 
Each was owned by its rider, and was his good friend as well as serv- 
ant. The understanding between the two could not be disturbed, 
no, not even by the swollen Shenandoah! The trooper, floating free 
upon the down-stream side, one hand on mane, or knees upgathered, 
and carbine held high, squatting in the saddle on the crossed stir- 
rups, kept up a stream of encouragement — soft words, pet names, 
cooing mention of sugar (little enough in the commissariat!) and of 
apples. The steed responded. The god above or beside him wished 
it thus, and certainly should be obeyed, and that with love. The 
rough torrent, the eddies, the violent current were nothing — at 
least, not much! In column of twos the horses breasted the river, the 
gods above them singing of praise and reward. They neared the 
western shore and the green, overhanging trees, touched bottom, 
plunged a little and came out, wet and shining, every inch of metal 
about them glinting in the level rays of the sun. 

High on the bank Stonewall Jackson with Flournoy and his aides, 
the first to cross, watched that passage of the squadrons. Little 


FRONT ROYAL By fe 


Sorrel, slow and patient, had perhaps been, in his own traversing, 
the one steed to hear no especial word of endearment nor much of 
promise. He did not seem to miss them; he and Jackson apparently 
understood each other. The men said that he could run only one 
way and that toward the enemy. 

Far down the Front Royal and Winchester turnpike, through a 
fair farming country, among cornfields and orchards, the running 
fight continued. It was almost sunset; long shadows stretched 
across the earth. Scene and hour should have been tranquil-sweet — 
fall of dew, vesper song of birds, tinkling of cow bells coming home. 
It was not so; it was filled with noise and smoke, and in the fields and 
fence corners lay dead and wounded men, while in the farmhouses 
of the region, women drew the blinds, gathered the children about 
them and sat trembling. 

The blue cavalry was hard put to it. The grey infantrymen 
were good marksmen, and their line was long, drawn across the road 
and the up and down of the fields. Here and there, now and again, a 
trooper went down to the dust, and the riderless horse, galloping to 
the rear, brought small comfort to Kenly’s retreating companies. 
At last there rode back the major commanding the New York 
squadron. ‘‘We’re losing too heavily, colonel! There’s a feverish- 
ness — if they’re reinforced I don’t know if I can hold the men —”’ 

Kenly debated within himself, then. ‘“I’ll make a stand at the 
cross-roads yonder. Atwell shall plant the guns and give them 
canister. It is nearly night —if we could hold them off one 
hour —” 

Richard Cleave, pressing very close with his skirmishers, lost 
sight of the blue infantry now behind an orchard-clad undulation. 
“Billy Maydew! come climb this tree and tell me what you see.” 

Billy went up the roadside locust like a squirrel. ‘Thar air a man 
just tumbled off a black horse with a white star! ’T was Dave hit 
him, I reckon. They look powerful droopy, them cavalrymen! The 
big man you would n’t let us take, he air waving his sabre and 
swearing —”’ 

“The infantry?” 

“The infantry air halted. The road air stuffed with them. One — 
two — three — six companies, stretched out like a black horse’s 
tail.”’ 


274 THE LONG ROLL 


“Faced which way?” 

“That way. No! by Jiminy, they ain’t! They air faced this way! 
They air going to make a stand!” 

“They have done well, and they’ve got a brave officer, whoever 
he is. The guns?” 

“Away ahead, but they air turning! They air making for a hill- 
top that hangs over the road. Thar’s another man off his horse! 
Threw up his arm and fell, and his foot caught in the stirrup. I 
don’t know if ’t war Dave this time shot him — anyhow, ’t war not 
Sergeant Coffin —” 

“Ts the infantry deploying?” 

“They air still in column — black as flies in the road. They air . 
tearing down the fence, so they can get into the fields.” 

“Look behind — toward the river.”’ 

Billy obediently turned upon the branch. “We air coming on in 
five lines — like the bean patch at home. I love them Lou-is-iana 
Tigers! What’s that ?” 

“What ?” 

“An awful cloud of dust — and a trumpet out of it! The First 
Maryland’s getting out of the way — Now the Tigers! — Oh-h-h!” 

He scrambled down. “By the left flank!’ shouted Cleave. 
“Double quick. March!” 

The 65th, the Louisiana troops, the First Maryland, moved 
rapidly west of the road, leaving a space of trampled green between 
themselves and it. Out of the dust cloud toward the river now rose 
a thud of many hoofs —a body of horse coming at a trot. The 
sound deepened, drew nearer, changed measure. The horses were 
galloping, though not at full speed. They could be seen now, in two 
lines, under bright guidons, eating up the waves of earth, galloping 
toward the sunset in dust and heat and thunder. At first sight like 
toy figures, men and horses were now grown life-size. They threat- 
ened, in the act of passing, to become gigantic. The sun had set, 
but it left walls and portals of cloud tinged and rimmed with fire. 
The horsemen seemed some home-returning aerial race, so straight 
they rode into the west. The ground shook, the dust rose higher, 
the figures enlarged, the gallop increased. Energy at its height, of 
a sudden all the trumpets blew 


FRONT ROYAL 275 











Past the grey infantry, frantically yelling its welcome, swept a 
tremendous charge. Knee to knee, shouting, chanting, horse and 
man one war shaft, endued with soul and lifted to an ecstasy, they 
went by, flecked with foam, in a whirlwind of dust, in an infernal 
clangour, with the blare and fury, the port and horror of Mars 
attended. The horses stretched neck, shook mane, breathed fire; 
the horsemen drained to the lees the encrusted heirloom, the cup 
of warlike passion. Frenzied they all rode home. 

The small cavalry force opposed, gasped at the apparition. Cer- 
tainly their officers tried to rally the men, but certainly they knew 
it for futility! Some of the troopers fired their carbines at the 
approaching tide, hoar, yelling, coming now so swiftly that every 
man rode as a giant and every steed seemed a spectre horse — 
others did not. All turned, before the shock, and fled, in a mad 
gallop of their own. 

Kenly’s infantry, yet in column, was packed in a road none too 
wide, between ragged banks topped by rail fences. Two panels of 
these had been taken down preparatory to deploying in the fields, 
but the movement was not yet made. Kenly had his face turned to 
the west, straining his eyes for the guns or for the reinforcements 
which happily General Banks might send. A shout arose. ‘Look 
out! Look out! Oh, good Lord!”’ 

First there was seen a horrible dust cloud, heard a great thunder 
of hoofs. Then out of all came bloodshot eyes of horses, stiffened 
manes, blue figures downward bent on the sweat-gleaming necks, 
oaths, prayers, sounds of unnerved Nature, here and there of grim 
fury, impotent in the torrent as a protesting straw. Into the blue 
infantry rode the blue cavalry. All down the soldier-crammed road 
ensued a dreadful confusion, danger and uproar. Men sprang for 
their lives to this side and that. They caught at jutting roots and 
pulled themselves out of the road up the crumbling banks. Where 
they could they reached the rail fences, tumbled over them and lay, 
gasping, close alongside. The majority could not get out of the 
road. They pressed themselves flat against the shelving banks, and 


276 THE LONG ROLL 


let the wedge drive through. Many were caught, overturned, felt 
the fierce blows of the hoofs. Regardless of any wreck behind them, 
on and over and down the Winchester road tore the maddened 
horses, the appalled troopers. 

The luckless infantry when, at last, their own had passed, had no 
time to form before the Confederate charge was upon them. At 
the highest key, the fiercest light, the extremest motion, sound and 
sight procuring for them a mighty bass and background, came 
Jackson’s charging squadrons. They swallowed the road and the 
fields on either hand. Kenly, with the foremost company, fired 
once, a point-blank volley, received at twenty yards, and emptying 
ten saddles of the central squadron. It could not stay the unstay- 
able; in a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, with indescribable noise, 
with roaring as of undammed waters, with a lapse of all colours into 
red, with smell of sweat and powder, hot metal and burning cloth, 
with savour of poisoned brass in furred mouths, with an impact of 
body, with sabre blow and pistol shot, with blood spilled and bone 
splintered, with pain and tremendous horror and invading nausea, 
with delirium, with resurgence of the brute, with jungle triumph, 
Berserker rage and battle ecstasy came the shock — then, in a 
moment, the mélée. 

Kenly, vainly striving to rally a handful about the colours, fell, 
all but mortally wounded. In the wild quarter of an hour that 
elapsed before the surrender of the whole, many of the blue were 
killed, many more wounded. Far and wide the men scattered, but 
far and wide they were ridden down. One of the guns was taken 
almost at once, the other a little later, overtaken a mile or two down 
the road. A few artillerymen, a squad or two of cavalry with several 
officers, Marchmont among them, got away. They were all who 
broke the trap. Kenly himself, twenty officers and nine hundred 
men, the dead, the wounded, the surrendered, together with a sec- 
tion of artillery, some unburned stores, and the Northern colours 
and guidons, rested in Jackson’s hands. That night in Strasburg, 
when the stars came out, men looked toward those that shone in the 
east. 


CHAPTER XXI 


STEVEN DAGG 


self from his dew-drenched couch, ran his fingers through his 

hair, kneaded neck, arms, and ankles, and groaned more 
heavily yet. He was dreadfully stiff and sore. In five days the “‘foot 
cavalry” had marched more than eighty miles. Yesterday the bri- 
gade had been afoot from dawn till dark. ‘And we did n’t have the 
fun of the battle neither,’ remarked Steve, in a savagely injured 
tone. ‘‘Leastwise none of us but the damned three companies and 
a platoon of ours that went ahead to skirmish ’cause they knew the 
type of country! Don’t I know the type of country, too? Yah!” 

The man nearest him, combing his beard with ostentation, burst 
into a laugh. “Did you hear that, fellows? Steve’s grumbling 
because he was n’t let to do it all! Poor Steve! poor Hotspur! poor 
Pistol!”? He bent, chuckling, over the pool that served him for 
mirror. “‘You stop calling me dirty names!” growled Steve, and, 
his toilet ended well-nigh before begun, slouched across to fire and 
breakfast. The former was large, the latter small. Jackson’s 
ammunition wagons, double-teamed, were up with the army, but 
all others back somewhere east of Front Royal. 

Breakfast was soon over — “sorry breakfast!”’ The assembly 
sounded, the column was formed, Winder made his brigade a short 
speech. Steve listened with growing indignation. ‘General Banks, 
falling back from Strasburg, is trying to get off clear to Winchester. 
(‘Well, let him! I don’t give a damn!’) We want to intercept him 
at Middletown. (‘Oh, do we?’) We want to get there before the 
head of his column appears, and then to turn and strike him full. 
(‘O Lord! I ain’t a rattler!”) We want to beat him in the middle 
Valley — never let him get to Winchester at all! (‘I ain’t objecting, 
if you'll give the other brigades a show and let them do it!’) It’s 
only ten miles to Middletown. (‘Only!’) A forced march needed. 
(‘O Gawd!’) Ashby and Chew’s Battery and a section of the Rock- 


er Dacc, waked by the shrill reveille, groaned, raised him- 


278 THE LONG ROLL 


bridge and the skirmishers and Wheat’s Tigers are ahead. (‘ Well, if 
they’re so brash, let them wipe out Banks and welcome! And if one 
damned officer that’s ahead gits killed, I won’t mourn him.’) Ewell 
with Trimble’s Brigade and the First Maryland, Courtenay and 
Brockenborough are off, making as the bird flies for Winchester! 
(‘We ain’t birds. We’re men, and awful tired men, too.’) Steuart 
with the 2d and 6th cavalry are already at Newtown. (‘What in 
hell do I care if they air?’) Campbell and Taliaferro and Elzey and 
Scott and the Stonewall and the balance of the guns form the main 
column, and at Middletown we’re going to turn and meet Banks. 
(‘Gawd! more fighting, on an empty stomach, and dog-tired!’) 
General Jackson says, ‘Men, we’re going to rid the Valley of Virginia 
of the enemy. Press on.’ You know what an avalanche is. (‘ Knowed 
it before you was born. It’s a place where you hide till the man 
you hate worse than pison oak comes by!’) Let the Stonewall 
now turn avalanche; fall on Banks at Middletown and grind him 
small! — Fours right! Forward! March! (‘Oh, Gawd! my cut foot! 
It’s my lasting hope that — sh! — Fool Tom Jackson’il break you 
same as he broke Garnett’).”’ 

The morning, at first divinely cool and sweet, turned hot and 
languid, humid and without air. It made the perspiration stream, 
and then the dust rose from the road, and the two together caused 
the most discomfortable grime! It marked all faces, and it lodged 
between neck and neckband and wrist and wristband where it 
chafed the skin. It got deep into the shoes — through holes enough, 
God knows! — and there the matter became serious, for many a 
foot was galled and raw. It got into eyes and they grew red and 
smarting. It stopped ear and nostril. It lined the mouth; it sifted 
down the neck and made the body miserable. At the starting, 
as the men quit the green banks of Shenandoah, several of the 
esthetic sort had been heard to comment upon the beauty of the 
scenery. Possibly the soul for beauty lasted, but as for the scenery, 
it vanished. The brigade was now upon the Front Royal and 
Winchester pike, moving in the foot and wheel prints of the 
advance, and under and through an extended cirrhus cloud of 
dirty saffron. The scenery could not be viewed through it — mere 
red blotches and blurs. It was so heavy that it served for dark- 
ness. Men saw each other dimly at the distance of ten feet, and 


STEVEN DAGG 279 


mounted officers and couriers went by, dun and shapeless, through 
the thick powder. 

Steve could not be said to mind grime (Sergeant Mathew Coffin 
did; he was forever wiping it away with what remained to him of a 
handkerchief), but the stuff in hisshoes made his feet hurt horribly. 
It was in his mouth besides, where it made him thirsty. He eyed 
an object dangling from the belt of the man next him, and since 
from long habit it had become easy to him to break the tenth com- 
mandment he broke it again — into a thousand pieces. At last, 
“Where did you get that canteen?”’ 

“Picked it up at McDowell. Ef ’t war n’t covered with dust you 
could see the U. S.” 

“Empty, I reckon?” 

“Nop. Buttermilk.” 

“© Gawd! I could drink Thunder Run dry!”’ 

“Sorry. Reckon we’ll come to a stream bimeby. Saving the 
milk ’gainst an emergency.” 

It did not appear that we would come to a stream, or a spring, 
or a well, or anything liquid —to anything but awful miles of 
dust and heat, trudged over by anything but three-leagued boots. 
Despite the spur of Winder’s speech the brigade moved with dispir- 
iting slowness. It was not the first in column; there were troops 
ahead and troops behind, and it would perhaps have said that it 
was not its part to overpass the one and outstrip the other. The 
whole line lagged. ‘Close up, men! close up!” cried the officers, 
through dust-lined throats. ‘‘If it’s as hot as ginger, then let the 
ginger show! Step out!” Back from the head of the column came 
peremptory aides. “Press on! General Jackson says, ‘Press on!’ — 
Yes; he knows you marched twenty-six miles yesterday, and that 
it’s hot weather! All the same we’ve got to get there! — Thank you, 
colonel, I will take a swallow! I’m damned tired myself.” 

Between nine and ten they came to a village. Boys and women 
stood in the dusty street with buckets of water — a few buckets, 
a little water. The women looked pale, as though they would swoon; 
beads of sweat stood on the boys’ brows and their lips worked. 
Thousands of soldiers had passed or were passing; all thirsty, all 
crying, ‘“‘ Water, please! water, please!’”” Women and boys had with 
haste drawn bucket after bucket from the wells of the place, 


280 THE LONG ROLL 


pumped them full from a cistern, or run to a near-by spring and 
come panting back to the road — and not one soldier in ten could get 
his tin cup filled! They went by, an endless line, a few refreshed, 
the vast majority thirstier for the Tantalus failure. The water 
bearers were more deadly tired than they; after it was all over, the 
last regiment passed, the women went indoors trembling in every 
limb. “O Jesus! this war is going to be a dreadful thing!” The 
column marching on and passing a sign-post, each unit read what 
it had to say. ‘Seven miles to Middletown. — Seven miles to 
hell!” : 

Some time later, the brigade made a discovery. “They are wil- 
lows — yes, they are!—running cross field, through the blur! 
Whoever’s toting the water bucket, get it ready!” 

The halt came — Jackson’s ten minutes out of an hour “lie- 
down-men. You-rest-all-over-lying-down” halt. The water buckets 
were ready, and there were the willows that the dust had made as 
sere as autumn, — but where was the stream? The thin trickle of 
water had been overpassed, churned, trampled into mire and dirt, 
by half the army, horse and foot. The men stared in blank disap- 
pointment. “A polecat could n’t drink here!” “Try it up and 
down,” said the colonel. “It will be clearer away from the road. 
But every one of you listen for the Fall-In.”’ 

Steve wandered off. He did not wait for clean water. There was 
a puddle, not half so bad as thirst! Settling down upon his hands, he 
leaned forward and well-nigh drank it up. Refreshed, he rose, got 
out of the mire back to the bank, and considered a deeper belt of 
willows farther down the stream. They were on the edge of the dust 
belt, they had an air faintly green, extremely restful. Steve looked 
over his shoulder. All the boys were drinking, or seeking a place to 
drink, and the dust was like a red twilight! Furtively swift as any 
Thunder Run “‘crittur,’” he made for the willows. They formed a 
deep little copse; nobody within their round and, oh joy! shade and a 
little miry pool! Steve sat down and drew off his shoes, taking some 
pains lest in the action side and sole part company. Undoubtedly 
his feet were sore and swollen, red and fevered. He drank from the 
miry pool, and then, trousers rolled to his knees, sunk foot and ankle 
in the delicious coolness. Presently he lay back, feet yet in mud and 
water, body flat upon cool black earth, overhead a thick screen of 


STEVEN DAGG 281 


willow leaves. “Ef I had a corn pone and never had to move I 
would n’t change for heaven. O Gawd! that damned bugle!”’ 

Fallin! Fall in!—Fall in! Fall in! Witha deep groan Steve 
picked up his shoes and dragged himself to the edge of the copse. 
He looked out. ‘‘Danged fools! running back to line like chicks 
when the hen squawks ‘Hawk!’ O Gawd! my foot’s too sore to 
run.” He stood looking cautiously out of an opening he had made 
in the willow branches. The regiments were already in column, the 
leading one, the 4th, formed and disappearing in the dust of the 
turnpike. “Air ye going now and have every damned officer swear- 
ing at you? What do they care if your foot’s cut and your back 
aches? and you could n’t come no sooner. I ain’t a-going.”’ Steve’s 
eyes filled with tears. He felt sublimely virtuous; a martyr from the 
first. ‘“‘What does anybody there care for me! They would n’t care 
if I dropped dead right in line. Well, I ain’t a-going to gratify them! 
What’s war, anyhow? It’s a trap to catch decent folk in! and the 
decenter you are the quicker you try to get out of it!” He closed the 
willow branches and stepped back to his lair. “Let ’em bellow for 
Steve just as loud as they like! I ain’t got no call to fight Banks on 
this here foot. If a damned provost-guard comes along, why I just 
fell asleep and could n’t help it.” 

So tired was he, and so soothing still his retreat, that to fall asleep 
was precisely what he did. The sun was twenty minutes nearer the 
zenith when noise roused him — voices up and down the stream. 
He crawled across the black earth and looked out. “Taliaferro’s 
Brigade getting watered! All I ask is you’ll just let me and my wil- 
lows alone.” 

He might ask, but Taliaferro’s seemed hardly likely to grant. 
Taliaferro’s had a harder time even than the Stonewall finding 
water. There was less there to find and it was muddier. The men, 
swearing at their luck, ranged up and down the stream. It was pres- 
ently evident that the search might bring any number around or 
through Steve’s cool harbour. He cursed them, then, in a sudden 
panic, picked up his shoes and slipped out at the copse’s back door. 
Able-bodied stragglers, when caught, were liable to be carried on and 
summarily deposited with their rightful companies. Deserters fared 
worse. On the whole, Steve concluded to seek safety in flight. At a 
little distance rose a belt of woods roughly parallel with the road. 


282 THE LONG ROLL 


Steve took to the woods, and found sanctuary behind the bole of an 
oak. His eye advanced just beyond the bark, he observed the move- 
ment of troops with something like a grin. On the whole he thought, 
perhaps, he would n’t rejoin. Taliaferro’s men hardly seemed happy. 
up and down the trodden, miry runlet. “‘ Wuz a time they would n’t 
think a dog could drink there, and now just look at them lapping it 
up! So many fine, stuck-up fellows, too— gentlemen and such. — 
Yah!” 

The brigade moved on as had done the Stonewall. There grew in 
the wood a sound. ‘‘What’s that?” Scrambling up, he went for- 
ward between the trees and presently came full upon a narrow wood 
road, with a thin growth of forest upon the other side. The sound 
increased. Steve knew it well. He stamped upon the moss with the 
foot that hurt him least. “ Artillery coming! — and all them damned 
gunners with eyes like lynxes —”’ 

He crossed the road and the farther strip of woods. Behind him 
the approaching wheels rumbled loudly; before him a narrow lane 
stretched through a ploughed field, to a grassy dooryard and a small 
house. On the edge of the wood was a mass of elderbush just com- 
ing into bloom. He worked his way into the centre of this, squatted 
down and regarded the house from between the green stems. Smoke 
rose from the chimney. “It must be near eleven o’clock,”’ thought 
Steve. ‘‘She’s getting dinner.” 

Behind him, through the wood, on toward Middletown rumbled 
the passing battery. The heavy sound brought a young woman to 
the door. She stood looking out, her hands shading her eyes; then, 
the train disappearing, went back to her work. Steve waited until the 
sound was almost dead, then left the elder, went up the lane and 
made his appearance before the open door. The woman turned from 
the hearth where she was baking bread. ‘‘Good-morning, sir.” 

“Morning, miss,” said Steve. ‘Could you spare a poor sick sol- 
dier a bite to eat?” 

He ended with a hollow groan and the weight of his body against 
the lintel. The young woman dragged forward a split-bottomed 
armchair. “Sit right down there! Of course I’ll give you something 
to eat. It ain’t anything catching, is it?” 

Steve sank into the chair. “It was pneumonia, and my strength 
ain’t come back yet.” 


STEVEN DAGG 283 


“T only asked because I have to think of my baby.” She glanced 
toward a cradle by the window. “Pneumonia is dreadful weakening! 
How come they let you march?” 

“Why, I did n’t,” said Steve, “want to be left behind. I wanted 
to be in the fight with the rest of the boys. So the captain said, says 
he, ‘Well, you can a it, for we need all the good fighters we’ve got, 
but if you find you ’re too weak to go on, fall out! Maybe some good 
Seraphim will give you ’commodation Jo» 

“T can’t give you ’commodation, because there’s just the pay 
and myself, James being with Ashby. But I can give you dinner (I 
have n’t got much, but what I’ve got you’re quite welcome to). You 
kin rest here till evening. Maybe a wagon’ll come along and give 
you a lift, so’s you can get there in time —”’ 

“Get where, ma’am?”’ 

“Why, wherever the battle’s going to be 

“Yaas, yaas,”’ said Steve. “It’s surely hard lines when those who 
kin fight have to take a back seat ’cause of illness and watch the 
other kind go front!” He groaned again and closed his eyes. “I 
don’t suppose you’ve got a drop of spirits handy?” 

The woman — she was hardly more than a girl — hesitated. Be- 
cause the most were heroic, and for the sake of that most, all Con- 
federate soldiers wore the garland. It was not in this or any year of 
the war that Confederate women lightly doubted the entire hero- 
ism of the least of individuals, so that he wore the grey. It was to 
them, most nobly, most pathetically, a sacred investiture. Priest 
without but brute within, wolf in shepherd’s clothing, were to them 
not more unlooked-for nor abhorrent than were coward, traitor, or 
shirk enwrapped in the pall and purple of the grey. Fine lines came 
into the forehead of the girl standing between Steve and the hearth. 
She remembered suddenly that James had said there were plenty of 
scamps in the army and that not every straggler was lame or ill. 
Some were plain deserters. 

“T have n’t got any spirits,’ she answered. “I did have a little 
bottle but I gave it to a sick neighbour. Anyhow, it is n’t good for 
weak lungs.” 

Steve looked at her with cunning eyes. “ You did n’t give it all 
away,” he thought. “You’ve got a little hid somewhere. O Gawd! 
I want a drink so bad!” 


1? 


284 THE LONG ROLL 


“T was making potato soup for myself,” said the girl, “and my 
father sent me half a barrel of flour from Harrisonburg and I was 
baking a small loaf of bread for to-morrow. It’s Sunday. It’s done 
now, and I’ll slice it for you and give you a plate of soup. That’s 
better for you than —. Where do you think we’ll fight to-day?” 

“Where? — Oh, anywhere the damned fools strike each other.” 
He stumbled to the table which she was spreading. She glanced 
at him. ‘There’s a basin and a roller towel on the back porch and 
the pump’s handy. Would n’t you like to wash your face and 
hands?” ; : 

Steve shook his tousled head. ‘‘Naw, I’m so burned the skin 
would come off. O Gawd! this soup is good.” 

“People getting over fevers and lung troubles don’t usually burn. 
They stay white and peaked even out of doors in July.” 

“T reckon I ain’t that kind. I’ll take another plateful. Gawd, 
what a pretty arm you’ve got!” 

The girl ladled out for him the last spoonful of soup, then went 
and stood with her foot upon the cradle rocker. “I reckon you ain’t 
that kind,” she said beneath her breath. ‘If you ever had pneu- 
monia I bet it was before the war!” 

Steve finished his dinner, leaned back in his chair and stretched 
himself. ‘‘Gawd! if I just had a nip. Look here, ma’am! I don’t 
believe you gave all that apple brandy away. S’pose you look and 
see if you was n’t mistaken.” 

y locteds Tt any.” 

‘““You’ve got too pretty a mouth to be lying that-a-way! Look-a- 
here, the doctor prescribed it.” 

“You’ve had dinner and you’ve rested. There’s a wood road 
over there that cuts off a deal of distance to Middletown. It’s rough 
but it’s shady. I believe if you tried you could get to Middletown 
almost as soon as the army.” 

“Did n’t I tell you I had a furlough? Where’d you keep that 
peach brandy when you had it ?” 

“T’m looking for James home any minute now. He’s patrolling 
between here and the pike.”’ 

“You’re lying. You said he was with Ashby, and Ashby’s away 


- north to Newtown — the damned West P’inter that marches at the 


head of the brigade said so! You have n’t got the truth in you, and 


STEVEN DAGG 285 


that’s a pity, for otherwise I like your looks first-rate.” He rose. 
“T’m going foraging for that mountain dew—” 

The girl moved toward the door, pushing the cradle in front of 
her. Steve stepped between, slammed the door and locked it, put- 
ting the key in his pocket. ‘‘ Now you jest stay still where you are or 
itll be the worse for you and for the baby, too! Don’t be figuring on 
the window or the back door, ’cause I’ve got eyes in the side of my 
head and I’ll catch you before you get there! That thar cupboard 
looks promising.” 

The cupboard not only promised; it fulfilled. Steve’s groping 
hand closed upon and drew forth a small old Revolutionary brandy 
bottle quite full. Over his shoulder he shot a final look at once pre- 
cautionary and triumphant. “ You purty liar! jest you wait till I’ve 
had my dram!” An old lustre mug stood upon the shelf. He filled 
this almost to the brim, then lifted it from the board. There was a 
sound from by the door, familiar enough to Steve — namely, the 
cocking of a trigger. ‘You put that mug down,” said the voice of 
his hostess, “or I’ll put a bullet through you! Shut that cupboard 
door. Go and sit down in that chair!” 

“*T ain’t loaded! I drew the cartridge.”’ 

“You don’t remember whether you did or not! And you are n’t 
willing for me to try and find out! You set down there! That’s it; 
right there where I can see you! My grandmother’s birthday mug! 
Yes, and she saw her mother kill an Indian right here, right where 
the old log cabin used to stand! Well, I reckon I can manage a dirty, 
sneaking hound like you. Grandmother’s cup indeed, that I don’t 
even let James drink out of! I’ll have to scrub it with brick dust to 
get your finger marks off —” 

“Won’t you please put that gun down, ma’am, and listen to 
reason ?” 

“I’m listening to something else. There’s three or four horses 
coming down the road —” 

“Please put that gun down, ma’am. I’ll say good-bye and go just 
as peaceable —”’ 

‘“‘And whether they’re blue or grey I hope to God they ’Il take you 
off my hands! There! They’ve turned up the lane. They’re os 
by the house!” 

She raised a strong young voice. “Help! Help! Stop, please! O 


286 THE LONG ROLL 


soldiers! Soldiers! Help! Soldiers! There! I’ve made them hear and 
waked the baby!”’ 

“Won’t you let me go, ma’am? I did n’t mean no harm.” 

“No more did the Indian great-grandmother killed when he broke 
in the door! You’re a coward and a deserter, and the South don’t 
need you! Bye, bye, baby — bye, bye!”’ 

A hand tried the door. “‘What’s the matter here? Open!” 

“Tt’s locked, sir. Come round to the window — Bye, baby, 
bye!” 

The dismounted cavalryman — an officer — appeared outside 
the open window. His eyes rested a moment upon the interior; then 
he put hands upon the sill and swung himself up and into the room. 

“What’s all this? Has this soldier annoyed you, madam?” 

The girl set down the musket and took up the baby. ‘‘I’mdown- 
right glad somebody came, sir. He’s a coward and a deserter and a 
drunkard and a frightener of women! He says he’s had pneumonia, 
and I don’t believe him. If I was the South I’d send every man 
like him right across Mason and Dixon as fast as they’d take them! 
— I reckon he’s my prisoner, sir, and I give him up to you.” 

The officer smiled. ‘I’m not the provost, but I’ll rid you of him 
somehow.” He wiped the dust from his face. “‘ Have you anything 
at all that we could eat? My men and I have had nothing since 
midnight.” 

“That coward’s eaten all I had, sir. I’m sorry — If you could 
wait a little, I’ve some flour and I’ll make a pan of biscuits —”’ 

“No. We cannot wait. We must be up with the army before it 
strikes the Valley pike.” 

“T’ve got some cold potatoes, and some scraps of bread crust I 
was saving for the chickens —”’ 

“Then won’t you take both to the four men out there? Hungry 
soldiers like cold potatoes and bread crusts. I’ll see to this fellow. 
— Now, sir, what have you got to say for yourself ?” 

“Major, my feet are so sore, and I was kind of light-headed! 
First thing I knew, I just somehow got separated from the bri- 
gade —”’ 

“We'll try to find it again for you. What were you doing here?”’ 

“Major, I just asked her for a little licker. And, being light- 
headed, maybe I happened to say something or other that she took 


STEVEN DAGG 287 


up notions about. The first thing I knew — and I just as innocent 
as her baby — she up and turned my own musket against me —” 

“Who locked the door?’”’ 

“Why — why —”’ 

“Take the key out of your pocket and go open it. Faugh! — 
What’s your brigade?”’ 

““The Stonewall, sir.” 

“Humph! They’d better stone you out of it. Regiment ?” 

“65th, sir. Company A. — If you’d be so good just to look at my 
foot, sir, you’d see for yourself that I could n’t march —”’ 

“We'll try it with the Rogue’s March. — 65th. Company A. 
Richard Cleave’s old company.”’ 

“He ain’t my best witness, sir. He’s got a grudge against me —” 

Stafford looked at him. “Don’t put yourself in a fury over it. 
Have you one against him?” 

“T have,” said Steve, ““and I don’t care who knows it! If he 
was as steady against you, sir, as he has proved himself against 
me — » 

“T would do much, you mean. What is your name?” 

“Steven Dagg.”’ 

The woman returned. “They’ve eaten it all, sir. I saved you a 
piece of bread. I wish it was something better.” 

Stafford took it from her with thanks. “As for this man, my 
orderly shall take him up behind, and when we reach Middletown 
I’ll turn him over with my report to his captain. If any more of his 
kind come around, I would advise you just to shoot them at once. — 
Now you, sir! In front of me. — March!” 

The five horsemen, detail of Flournoy’s, sent upon some service 
the night before, mounted a hill from which was visible a great 
stretch of country. From the east came the Front Royal road; north 
and south stretched that great artery, the Valley turnpike. Dust 
lay over the Front Royal road. Dust hung above the Valley pike — 
hung from Strasburg to Middletown, and well beyond Middletown. 
Out of each extended cloud, now at right angles, came rumblings as 
of thunder. The column beneath the Front Royal cloud was moving 
rapidly, halts and delays apparently over, lassitude gone, energy 
raised to a forward blowing flame. That on the Valley pike, the six- 
mile-long retreat from Strasburg, was making, too, a progress not 


288 THE LONG ROLL 


unrapid, considering the immensity of its wagon train and the un- 
certainty of the commanding general as to what, on the whole, it 
might be best to do. The Confederate advance, it was evident, 
would strike the pike at Middletown in less than fifteen minutes. 

Stafford and his men left the hill, entered a body of woods run- 
ning toward the village, and three minutes later encountered a de- 
tachment of blue horsemen, flankers of Hatch’s large cavalry force 
convoying the Federal wagon train. There was a shout, and an in- 
terchange of pistol shots. The blue outnumbered the grey four to 
one. The latter wheeled their horses, used spur and voice, out- 
stripped a shower of bullets and reached Middletown. When, 
breathless, they drew rein before a street down which grey infantry 
poured to the onslaught, one of the men, pressing up to Stafford, 
made his report. “‘That damned deserter, sir! — in the scrimmage 
a moment ago he must have slipped off. I’m sorry — but I don’t 
reckon he’s much loss.” 

Steve had taken refuge behind the lock of a rail fence draped with 
creeper. On the whole, he meant to stay there until the two armies 
had wended their ways. When it was all done and over, he would 
make a change somehow and creep to the southward and get a 
doctor’s certificate. All this in the first gasp of relief, at the end of 
which moment it became apparent that the blue cavalry had seen 
him run to cover. A couple of troopers rode toward the rail fence. 
Steve stepped from behind the creepers and surrendered. ‘‘Thar 
are Daggs up North anyway,” he explained to the man who took 
his musket. ‘I’ve a pack of third cousins in them parts somewhere. 
I should n’t wonder if they were n’t fighting on your side this dog- 
goned minute! I reckon I’d as lief fight there myself.”’ 

The soldier took him to his officer. “It’s a damned deserter, 
sir. Says he’s got cousins with us. Says he’d as soon fight on one 
side as the other.” : 

“T can’t very well fight nowhere,” whined Steve. “If you’d be 
so good as to look at my foot, sir —” 

“T see. You deserted and they picked you up. Very well, Mr. 
Deserter, I want some information and you’re the man to give 
it to me.” 

Steve gave it without undue reluctance. ‘“‘ What in hell does it 
matter, anyway?” he thought, “they’ll find out damned quick any- 


STEVEN DAGG 289 


how about numbers and that we are n’t only Ewell. Gawd! Old 
Jack’s struck them this very minute! I hear the guns.” 

So did the company to which he had deserted. “Hell and dam- 
nation! Artillery to shake the earth! Middletown. All the wagons 
to pass and the cavalry. — It is n’t just Ewell’s division, he says. 
He says it’s all of them and Stonewall Jackson! — Take the fellow 
up somebody and bring him along! — Fours right! Forward!” 

Five minutes later they reached the pike, south of Middletown. 
It proved a seething stream of horse and foot and wagon train, 
forms shadowy and umber, moving in the whirling dust. Over all 
hung like a vast and black streamer a sense of panic. Underneath 
it every horse was restive and every voice had an edge. Steve gath- 
ered that there were teamsters who wished to turn and go back to 
Strasburg. He saw wagon masters plying long black whips about 
the shoulders of these unwilling; he heard officers shouting. The 
guns ahead boomed out, and there camea cry of “Ashby”! The next 
instant found him violently unseated and hurled into the dust of 
the middle road, from which he escaped by rolling with all the 
velocity of which he was capable into the depression at the side. 
He hardly knew what had happened — there had been, he thought, 
a runaway team dragging an ordnance wagon. He seemed to re- 
member a moving thickness in the all-pervading dust, and, visible 
for an instant, a great U. S. painted on the wagon side. Then 
shouts, general scatteration, some kind of a crash — He rubbed 
a bump upon his forehead, large as a guinea hen’s egg. ‘Gawd! 
I wish I’d never come into this here world!” 

The world was, indeed, to-day rather like a bad dream — like 
one of those dim and tangled streams of things, strange and fright- 
ful, at once grotesquely unfamiliar and sickeningly real, which one 
neighbours for a time in sleep. Steve picked himself out of the 
ditch, being much in danger, even there, of trampling hoofs or wagons 
gone amuck, and attained, how he could not tell, a rank wayside 
clump of Jamestown weed and pokeberry. In the midst of this he 
squatted, gathered into as small a bunch as was physically possible. 
He was in a panic; the sweat cold upon the back of his hands. 
Action or inaction in this world, sitting, standing, or going seemed 
alike ugly and dangerous. 

First of all, this world was blue-clad and he was dressed in grey. 


290 THE LONG ROLL 


It was in a wild hurry; the main stream striving somehow to gain 
Middletown, which must be passed, hook or crook, aid of devil or 
aid of saint, while a second current surged with increasing strength 
back toward Strasburg. All was confusion. They would never stop 
to listen to explanations as to a turned coat! Steve was sure that 
they would simply shoot him or cut him down before he could say 
“Tam one of you!”” They would kill him, like a stray bee in the 
hive, and go their way, one way or the other, whichever way they 
were going! The contending motions made him giddy. 

An aide in blue, galloping madly from the front, encountered 
beside the pokeberry clump an officer, directing, with his sword. 
Steve was morally assured that they had seen him, had stopped, 
in short, to hale him forth. As they did not — only excitedly shouted 
each at the other — he drew breath again. He could see the two but 
dimly, close though they were, because of the dust. Suddenly there 
came to him a rose-coloured thought. That same veil must make 
him well-nigh invisible; more than that, the dust lay so thickly on all 
things that colour in any uniform was a debatable quality. He 
did n’t believe anybody was noticing. The extreme height to which 
his courage ever attained, was at once his. He felt almost dare- 
devil. 

The aide was shouting, so that he might be heard through the 
uproar. ‘Where are the guns? Colonel Hatch says for the good 
Lord’s sake hurry them up! Hell’s broke loose and occupied Middle- 
town. Ashby’s there, and they say Jackson! They’ve planted guns 
— they’ve strung thousands of men behind stone fences — they’re 
using our own wagons for breastworks! The cavalry was trying 
to get past. Listen to that!” 

The other officer shouted also, waving his sword. “There’s a 
battery behind — Here it comes! — We ought to have started last 
night. The general said he must develop the forces of the enemy — ” 

“‘He’s developing them all right. Well, good-bye! Meet in Wash- 
ington!” 

The battery passed with uproar, clanging toward the front, scat- 
tering men to either side like spray. Steve’s wayside bower was in- 
vaded. ‘‘Get out of here! This ain’t no time to be sitting on your 
tail, thinking of going fishing! G’lang!”’ 

Steve went, covered with dust, the shade of the uniform below 


STEVEN DAGG 291 


never noticed in the furious excitement of the road. Life there was 
at fever point, aware that death was hovering, and struggling to 
escape. In the dust and uproar, the blare and panic, he was aware 
that he was moving toward Middletown where they were fighting. 
Fighting was not precisely that for which he was looking, and yet 
he was moving that way, and he could not help it. The noise in front 
was frightful. The head of the column of which he now formed an 
unwilling part, the head of the snake, must be somewhere near 
Newtown, the rattling tail just out of Strasburg. The snake was 
trying to get clear, trying to get out of the middle Valley to Win- 
chester, fifteen miles away. It was trying to drag its painful length 
through the village just ahead. There were scorpions in the village, 
on both sides the pike, on the hills above. Stonewall Jackson with 
his old sabre, with his ‘Good! Good!” was hacking at the snake, 
just there, in its middle. The old sabre had not yet cut quite 
through, but there was hope — or fear — (the deserter positively 
did not know which) that presently it would be done. A tall soldier, 
beside whom, in the dream torrent, Steve found himself, began to - 
talk. “Got any water? No. Nobody has. I guess it’s pouring down 
rain in New Bedford this very minute! All the little streams run- 
ning.” He sighed. “’T ain’t no use in fussing. I don’t remember 
to have ever seen you before, but then we’re all mixed up —”’ 

“We are,” said Steve. “Ain’t the racket awful ?” 

“Awful. ’T is going to be like running the gauntlet, to run that 
town, and we’re most there. If I don’t get out alive, and if you 
ever go to New Bedford — Whoa, there! Look out!” 

Steve, thrust by the press away from the pike into a Middletown 
street, looked for a cellar door through which he might descend 
and be in darkness. All the street was full of struggling forms. A 
man on horseback, tall and horrible in the nightmare, cut at him 
with a sabre as long as himself. Steve ducked, went under the 
horse’s belly, and came up to have a pistol shot take the cap from 
his head. Witha yell he ran beneath the second horse’s arching neck. 
The animal reared; a third horseman raised his carbine. There was 
an overturned Conestoga wagon in the middle of the street, its 
white top like a bubble in all the wild swirl and eddy of the place. 
Steve and the ball from the carbine passed under the arch at the 
same instant, the bullet lodging somewhere in the wagon bed. 


292 THE LONG ROLL 


Steve at first thought he might be dead, for it was cool and dark 
under the tilted canvas, and there was a momentary effect of quiet- 
ness. The carbine had been fired; perhaps the bullet was in his 
brain. The uncertainty held but a second; outside the fracas burst 
forth again, and beneath him something moved in the straw. It 
proved to be the driver of the wagon, wounded, and fallen back from 
the seat in front. He spoke now in a curious, dreamy voice. ‘‘Get 
off the top of my broken leg — damn you to everlasting hell!” 
Steve squirmed to one side. “Sorry. Gawd knows I wish I was n’t 
any nearer it than the Peaks of Otter!” There was a triangular tear 
in the canvas. He drew down the flap and looked out. “They were 
Ashby’s men — all those three!” He began to cry, though noise- 
lessly. ‘‘They had n’t ought to cut at me like that — shooting, too, 
without looking! They ought to ha’ seen I wasn’t no damned 
Yank —” The figure in the straw moved. Steve turned sick with 
apprehension. ‘‘Did you hear what I said? I was just a-joking. 
Gawd! It’s enough to make a man wish he was a Johnny Reb — 
‘ Hey, what did you say?” 

But the figure in blue said nothing, or Pir some useless thing 
about wanting water. Steve, reassured, looked again out of window. 
His refuge lay a few feet from the pike, and the pike was a road 
through pandemonium. He could see, upon a height, dimly, through 
the dust and smoke the Rockbridge battery. Yellow flashes came 
from it, then ear-splitting sound. A Federal force, horse, foot and 
guns, had hastily formed in the opposite fields, seized a crest, 
planted cannon. These sent screaming shells. In between the iron 
giants roared the mélée — Ashby jousting with Hatch’s convoying 
cavalry — the Louisiana troops firing in a long battle line, from be- 
hind the stone fences —a horrible jam of wagons, overturned or 
overturning, panic-stricken mules, drivers raving out oaths, using 
mercilessly long, snaky, black whips — heat, dust, thirst and thun- 
der, wild excitement, blood and death! There were all manner of 
wagons. Ambulances were there with inmates, — fantastic sick- 
rooms, with glare for shade, Tartarean heat for coolness, cannon 
thunder and shouting for quietness, grey enemies for nursing wo- 
men, and for home a battlefield in a hostile land. Heavy ordnance 
wagons, far from the guns they were meant to feed, traces cut.and 
horses gone, rested reef-like for the tides to break against. Travel- 


STEVEN DAGG 293 


ling forges kept them company, and wagons bearing officers’ luggage. 
Beneath several the mules were pinned; dreadful sight could any 
there have looked or pitied! Looming through there were the great 
supply wagons, with others of lighter stores, holding boxes and barrels 
of wines and fruits, commodities of all sorts, gold-leafed fripperies, 
luxuries of all manner, poured across the Potomac for her soldiers by 
the North. Sutlers’ wagons did not lack, garishly stocked, forlorn as 
Harlequin in the day’s stress. In and around and over all these 
stranded hulls roared the opposing forces. Steve saw Ashby, on 
the black stallion, directing with a gauntleted hand. Four great 
draught horses, drawing a loaded van, without a driver, maddened 
with fright, turned into this street up and down which there was 
much fighting. A shout arose. Carbines cracked. One of the leaders 
came down upon his knees. The other slipped in blood and fell. The 
van overturned, pinning beneath it one of the wheel horses. Its 
fall, immediately beside the Conestoga, blocked Steve’s window. He 
turned to crawl to the other side. As he did so the wounded soldier 
in the straw had a remark to make. He made it in the dreamy voice 
he had used before. ‘‘ Don’t you smell cloth burning?” 

Steve did; in an instant saw it burning as well, first the corner of 
the canvas cover, then the straw beneath. He gave a screech. 
“We’re on fire! Gawd! I’ve got to get out of this!” 

The man in the straw talked dreamily on. “I got a bullet through 
the end of my backbone. I can’t sit up. I been lying here studying 
the scoop of this here old wagon. It looks to me like the firmament 
at night, with all the stars a-shining. There’s no end of texts about 
stars. ‘Like as one star differeth from another—’” He began to 
cough. “There seems to be smoke. I guess you’ll have to drag me 
out, brother.” 

At the end of the village a stone fence ran between two houses, on 
the other side of a little garden slope planted with potatoes. In the 
shadow of the wall a line of men, kneeling, rested rifle barrel upon 
the coping and fired on Hatch’s cavalry, now much broken, waver- 
ing toward dispersion. At first the line was hidden by a swirl of 
smoke; this lifted, and Steve recognized a guidon they had planted, 
then the men themselves. They were the Louisiana Tigers, Wheat’s 
Battalion, upgathered from levee and wharf and New Orleans 
purlieu, among many of a better cast, not lacking rufflers and bravos, 


294 THE LONG ROLL 


soldiers of fortune whom Pappenheim might not have scorned. 
Their stone wall leaped fire again. 

Steve looked to heaven and earth and as far around as the dun 
cloud permitted, then moved with swiftness across the potato patch. 
All about in the mingled dust and smoke showed a shifting pageantry 
of fighting men; upon the black earth below the rank green leaves 
and purple blooms lay in postures hardly conceivable the dead and 
wounded. In the line by the stone fence was here and there a gap. 
Steve, head between shoulders, made for the breastwork and sank 
into one of these openings, his neighbour upon one hand an Irish 
roustabout, on the other a Creole from a sugar plantation. He ex- 
plained his own presence. ‘‘I got kind of separated from my com- 
pany — Company A, 65th Virginia. I had an awful fight with three 
damned Yanks, and a fourth came in and dragged my 5 gun away! If 
you don’t mind I’ll just stay here and help you — 

“Sorra an objection,” said the Irishman. ‘Pick up Tim’s musket 
behind you there and get to wurruk!”’ 

“Bon jour!” said the other side. “One camarade ees always zee 
welcome!” 

An order rang down the line. ‘‘Sthop firing, is it?” remarked the 
Irishman. ‘And that’s the first dacint wurrud I’ve heard this half 
hour! Wid all the plazure in life, captin!’’ He rested his musket 
against the stones, drew himself up, and viewed the prospect. 
“Holy Saint Pathrick! look at them sthramin’ off into space! An’ 
look at the mile of wagons they’re afther lavin! Refrishmint in 
thim, my frind, for body and sowl!”’ 

Steve pulled himself up beside the other. “Thar ain’t any danger 
now of stray bullets, I reckon? There’s something awful in seeing a 
road like that. There’s a man that his mother would n’t know! — 
horse stepped on his face, I reckon. Gawd! we have gangs of prison- 
ers! — Who’s that coming out of the cloud ?”’ 

“Chew’s Horse Artillery — with Ashby, the darlint!” 

Ashby stopped before the stone house to the right. “There 
are men in here — officers with them. Captain, go bid them sur- 
render.” 

The captain, obeying, found a barred door and no answer. An 
approach to the window revealed behind the closed blinds the gleam 
of a musket barrel. “Go again! Tell them their column’s cut and 


STEVEN DAGG 295 


their army dispersed. If they do not surrender at once I will plant a 
shell in the middle of that room.” 

The captain returned once more. “ Well?” 

“They said, ‘Go to hell,’ sir. They said General Banks would be 
here in a moment, and they’d taken the house for his headquarters. 
They ’ve got something in there beside water, I think.” 

A sergeant put in a word. ‘‘There’s a score of them. They seized 
this empty house, and they’ve been picking off our men —”’ 

“Double canister, point-blank, Allen. — Well, sergeant ?”’ 

“Tt’s not certain it was an empty house, sir. One of the Tigers, 
there, thinks there are women in it.”’ 

“Women!” 

“He don’t know — just thinks so. Thinks he heard a cry when 
the Yanks broke in — Ah! — Well, better your hat than you, sir! 
We'll blow that sharpshooter where he can look out of window sure 
enough! Match’s ready, sir.” 

Ashby put back on his head the soft wide hat with a bullet hole 
beside the black plume. “No, no, West! We can’t take chances like 
that! We’ll break open the door instead.” 

“The others think that the Tiger was mistaken, sir. They say all 
the women went out of the other houses, and they’re sure they went 
out of this one, too. Shan’t we fire, sir ?”’ 

“No, no! We can’t take chances. Limber up, lieutenant, and 
move on with the others. — Volunteers to break open that door!”’ 

“Ain’t nobody looking,” thought Steve, behind the wall. ‘Gawd! 
I reckon I’ll have to try my luck again. ’T won’t do to stay here.” 
To the big Irishman he said, ‘“‘ Reckon I'll try again to find my com- 
pany! I don’t want to be left behind. Old Jack’s going to drive 
them, and he needs every fighter!’ 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE VALLEY PIKE 


Ashby and the line of Tigers behind the fence, he became 
aware that not a small portion of Wheat’s Battalion had 
broken ranks and was looting the wagons. There were soldiers like 
grey ants about a sutler’s wagon. Steve, struggling and shouldering 
boldly enough now, managed to get within hailing distance. Men 
were standing on the wheels, drawing out boxes and barrels and 
throwing them down into the road, where the ants swarmed to the 
attack. Not the Tigers alone, but a number of Ashby’s men as well 
engaged in the general business. The latter, either not so hungry or 
more valiant to abstain from the smaller rifling, turned to the plun- 
der of horses. There were horses enough, dead and wounded, along 
that frightful road. Others were unhurt, still harnessed to wagons, 
or corralled in fence corners, or huddled with prisoners in the trodden 
fields. Horses, to the trooper of the Valley, were as horses in the ten 
years’ war at Troy — the prized spoil of battle, the valued trophies, 
utilities outweighing all filagree spoil. Each man of Ashby’s owned 
the horse he rode, burned to provide himself with a second mount, 
and flamed to be able to say at home, “ This horse I took at Middle- 
town, just before we drove the Yankees out of the Valley and ended 
the war!” “Home,” for many of them was not at all distant — gal- 
lop a few miles, deposit the prize, return, catch up before Winches- 
ter! Wild courage, much manliness, much chivalry, ardent devotion 
to Ashby and the cause, individualism of a citizen soldiery, and a 
naive indiscipline all their own — such were Ashby’s men! Not a 
few now acted upon the suggestion of the devil who tempts through 
horse flesh. In the dust they went by Steve like figures of a frieze. 
Inefficient even in plundering, he found himself possessed of but a 
handful of crackers, a tin of sardines — a comestible he had never 
seen before and did not like when he tasted it — and a bottle of what 
he thought wine but proved vinegar. Disgusted, he moved to the 


A s he moved away from the stone house, the vicinity of 


THE VALLEY PIKE 297 


next wagon, overswarmed like the first by grey ants. This time it 
was ale, unfamiliar still, but sufficiently to his liking. “‘Gawd! Jest 
to drink when you’re thirsty, and eat when you’re hungry, and sleep 
when you’re sleepy —” 

A drum beat, a bugle blew. Fallin! Fallin! Officers passed from 
wagon to wagon. They were ready enough with the flats of their 
swords. “‘For shame, men, for shame! Fall in! Fall in! General 
Jackson is beyond Newtown bynow. Youdon’t want him to have to 
wait for you, do you? Fall in!” 

The Valley pike, in the region of Middletown, proved a cumbered 
path. From stone fence to stone fence, in the middle trough of dust, 
and on the bordering of what had been, that morning, dew-gemmed 
grass and flower, War the maniac had left marks. Overturned 
wagons formed barriers around which the column must wind. Some 
were afire; the smoke of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs 
mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of 
Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with 
piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave 
buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of sol- 
diers’ impedimenta — knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, 
tolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. 
They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was thick. There 
were many wounded; the greater number of these had somehow 
reached the foul grass and trampled flowers of the wayside. Prison- 
ers were met; squads brought in from the road, from fields and 
woods. There was one group, men and horses covered with the dust 
of all time, disarmed, hatless, breathless, several bleeding from sabre 
cuts. One among them — a small man on a tall horse — indulged in 
bravado. ‘What are you going to do with us now you’ve got us? 
You’ve nowhere to take us to! Your damned capital’s fallen — 
fell this morning! Yes, it did! News certain. Rebellion’s over and 
Jack Ketch’s waiting for you — waiting for every last dirty raga- 
muffin and slave-driver that calls himself general or president, and 
for the rest of you, too! Pity you did n’t have just one neck so’s he 
could do the whole damn thirteen millions of you at once! — Jetf 
Davis and Lee and Johnston were hanged at noon. This very mo- 
ment Little Mac’s in Richmond, marching down whatever your 
damned Pennsylvania Avenue’s called —” 


298 THE LONG ROLL 


A negro body servant marching in the rear of one of the con- 
temptuous companies broke ranks and rushed over to the reviling 
soldier. ‘You damn po’ white trash, shet yo’ mouf or I’ll mek you! 
Callin’ Main Street ‘Pennsylvania Avenue,’ and talkin’ ’bout 
hangin’ gent’men what you ain’t got ’bility in you ter mek angry 
enuff ter swear at you! ’N Richmon’ fallen! Richmon’ ain’ half as 
much fallen as you is! Richmon’ ain’ never gwine ter fall. I done 
wait on Marse Robert Lee once’t at Shirley, an he ain’t er gwine ter 
let it! ‘Pennsylvania Avenue!’ ” 

Half a mile from Middletown they came up with a forlorn little 
company. On a high bank above the road, huddled beneath three 
cedars, appeared the theatrical troupe which had amused General 
Banks’s army in Strasburg. Men and women there were, a dozen 
actors,and they had with them a cart bearing their canvas booth 
and the poor finery of their wardrobe. One of the women nursed 
a baby; they all looked down like wraiths upon the passing sol- 
diers. 

Firing broke out ahead. ‘‘ Newtown,” said the men beside Steve. 
“T’ve got friends there. Told ’em when we came up the Valley after 
Kernstown we’d come down again! ’N here we are, bigger’n life and 
twice as natural! That’s Rockbridge making that awful noise. Must 
be a Yankee battery — There it opens! Oh, we’re going to have a 
chance, too!” 

They were moving at double-quick. Steve simulated a stumble, 
caught himself, groaned and fell out of line. The wall to the left 
blazed. He uttered a yell and sprang back. “That’s right!” said 
the man. “It’s taken most a year to learn it, but you feel a whole 
heap safer in line than out of it when firing’s going on. That’s a nice 
little — what d’ye call it? — they’ve planted there —” 

“Avalanche,” panted Steve. “O Gawd!” A minie ball had 
pierced the other’s brain. He fell without a sound, and Steve 
went on. 

The troops entered the hamlet at a run, passing two of the Rock- 
bridge guns planted on a hillock and hurling shell against a Federal 
battery at the far end of the street. There was hot fighting through 
the place, then the enemy, rallied here, broke again and dispersed to 
the westward. The grey soldiers swept through the place, and the 
people with tears and laughter cried them welcome. On the porch. 


THE VALLEY PIKE 299 


of a comfortable house stood a comfortable, comely matron, pale 
with ardent patriotism, the happy tears running down her cheeks. 
Parched as were their throats the troops found voice to cheer, as 
always, when they passed through these Valley towns. They waved 
their colours vigorously; their ragged bit of a band played “Old Vir- 
ginny never tire.’”’ The motherly soul on the porch, unconscious of 
self, uplifted, tremulous with emotion, opened wide her arms, “All of 
you run here and kiss me!”’ 

Late afternoon came and the army yet skirmished, marched, 
marched, skirmished on the Valley pike. The heat decreased, but 
dust and thirst remained. Fatigue was the abominable thing. 
“Gawd!” thought Steve. “I can’t stand it any longer. I got ter 
quit, and ef I could shoot that lieutenant, I would.” The man 
whom the closing of the ranks had brought upon his left began to 
speak in a slow, refined voice. “There was a book published in 
England a year or so ago. It brings together old observations, 
shoots and theories, welds them, and produces a Thor’s hammer 
that’s likely to crack some heads. Once upon a time, it seems, we 
went on four feet. It’s a pity to have lost so valuable a faculty. 
Oh, Jupiter! we are tired!”’ 

A man behind put in his word. “To-morrow’s Sunday. Two 
Sundays ago we were at Meechum’s River, and since then we’ve 
marched most two hundred miles, and fought two battles and a heap 
of skirmishes! I reckon there’ll be a big fight to-morrow, with Old 
Jack jerking his hand in the air as they say he’s been doing! ’N all 
to the sound of church bells! Oh, Moses, I’m tired!” 

At sunset the bugles blew halt. The men dropped down on the 
tarnished earth, on the vast, spectacular road to Winchester. They 
cared not so much for supper, faint as they were; they wanted sleep. 
Supper they had — all that could be obtained from the far corners 
of haversacks and all that, with abounding willingness, the neigh- 
bouring farmhouses could scrape together — but when it came to 
sleep —. With nodding heads the men waited longingly for roll call 
and tattoo, and instead there came an order from the front. “‘A 
night march! O Lord, have mercy, for Stonewall Jackson never 
does.” Fallin! Fall in! Column Forward t 

When they came to the Opequon they had a skirmish with a 
Massachusetts regiment which fired a heavy volley into the cavalry 


300 THE LONG ROLL 


ahead, driving it back upon the 33d Virginia, next in column. The 
33d broke, then rallied. Other of the Stonewall regiments deployed 
in the fields and the 27th advanced against the opposing force, part 
of Banks’s rearguard. It gave way, disappearing in the darkness of 
the woods. The grey column, pushing across the Opequon, came 
into a zone of Federal skirmishers and sharpshooters ambushed be- 
hind stone fences. 

Somewhere about midnight Steve, walking in about the worst 
dream he had ever had, determined that no effort was too great 
if directed toward waking. It was a magic lantern dream — black 
slides painted only with stars and fireflies, succeeded by slides in 
which there was a moment’s violent illumination, stone fences leap- 
ing into being as the musket fire ran along. A halt — a company 
deployed — the foe dispersed, streaming off into the darkness — 
the hurt laid to one side for the ambulances— Column Forward! 
Sometimes a gun was unlimbered, trained upon the threatening 
breastwork and fired. Once a shell burst beneath a wagon that 
had been drawn into the fields. It held, it appeared, inflammable 
stores. Wagon and contents shot into the air with a great sound 
and glare, and out of the light about the place came a frightful cry- 
ing. Men ran to right and left to escape the rain of missiles; then 
the light died out, and the crying ceased. The column went on 
slowly, past dark slides. Its progress seemed that of a snail army. 
Winchester lay the fewest of miles away, but somewhere there was 
legerdemain. The fewest of miles stretched like a rubber band. The 
troops marched for three minutes, halted, marched again, halted, 
marched, halted. To sleep—to sleep! Column Forward !— Column 
Forward! : 

There was a bridge to cross over a wide ditch. Steve hardly broke 
his dream, but here he changed the current. How he managed he 
could scarce have told, but he did find himself under the bridge 
where at once he lay down. The mire and weed was like a blissful 
bed. He closed his eyes. Three feet above was the flooring, and all 
the rearguard passing over. It was like lying curled in the hollow 
of a drum, a drum beaten draggingly and slow. “Gawd!” thought 
Steve. “It sounds liké a Dead March.”’ 

He slept, despite the canopy of footsteps. He might have lain 
like a log till morning but that at last the flooring of the bridge 


THE VALLEY PIKE 301 


rebelled. A section of a battery, kept for some hours at Middletown, 
found itself addressed by a courier, jaded, hoarse as a raven of the 
night. ‘General Jackson says,‘ Bring up these guns.’ He says,‘ Make 
haste.’”? The battery limbered up and came with a heavy noise down 
the pike, through the night. Before it was the rearguard; the artil- 
lery heard the changed sound as the men crossed the wooden bridge. 
The rearguard went on; the guns arrived also at the ditch and the 
overtaxed bridge. The Tredegar iron gun went over and on, gain- 
ing on the foot, with intent to pass. The howitzer, following, 
proved the last straw. The bridge broke. A gun wheel went down, 
and amid the oaths of the drivers a frightened screech came from 
below. ‘“O Gawd! lemme get out of this!” 

Pulled out, he gave an account of his cut foot, piteous enough. 
The lieutenant listened. “‘The 65th? Scamp, I reckon, but flesh 
is weak! Hasn’t been exactly a circus parade for any of us. Let 
him ride, men — if ever we get this damned wheel out! Keep an 
eye on him, Fleming! — Now, all together! — Pull, White Star! — 
Pull, Red Star!” 

The column came to Kernstown about three o’clock in the morn- 
ing. Dead as were the troops the field roused them. “ Kernstown! 
Kernstown! We’re back again.” 

“Here was where we crossed the pike — there’s the old ridge. 
Griffin tearing up his cards — and Griffin’s dead at McDowell.” 

“That was Fulkerson’s wall — that shadow over there! There’s 
the bank where the 65th fought. — Kernstown! I’m mighty tired, 
boys, but I’ve got a peaceful certainty that that was the only bat- 
tle Old Jack’s ever going to lose!”’ 

“Old Jack did n’t lose it. Garnett lost it.” 

“That ain’t a Stonewall man said that! General Garnett’s in 
trouble. I reckon did n’t anybody lose it. Shields had nine thou- 
sand men, and he just gained it!—Shields the best man they’ve 
had in the Valley. Kernstown! — Heard what the boys at Middle- 
town called Banks? Mr. Commissary Banks. Oh, law! that pesky 
rearguard again!” 

The skirmish proved short and sharp. The Federal rearguard 
gave way, fell back on Winchester; the Confederate column, ad- 
vance, main and rear, heard in the cold and hollow of the night the 
order: Halt. Stack arms! Break ranks! From regiment to regiment 


302 THE LONG ROLL 


ran a further word. “One hour. You are to rest one hour, men. 
Lie down.” 

In the first grey streak of dawn a battery which had passed in turn 
each segment of the column, came up with the van, beyond Kerns- 
town battlefield, and halted upon a little rise of ground. All around 
stretched grey, dew-wet fields and woods, and all around lay an 
army, sleeping, strange sight in the still and solemn light, with the 
birds cheeping overhead! The guns stopped, the men got down from 
limber and caisson, the horses were unhitched. ‘An hour’s sleep — 
Kernstown battlefield!” 

An officer whose command lay in the field to the left, just beyond 
a great breach that had been made in the stone fence, arose from the 
cloak he had spread in the opening and came over to the guns. 
“Good-morning, Randolph! Farmers and soldiers see the dawn! 


Light thickens; and the crow 

Makes wing to the rooky wood. 
The poor guns! Even they look overmarched.” As he spoke he 
stroked the howitzer as though it had been a living thing. — 

“We’ve got with us a stray of yours,” said the artilleryman. 
“Says he has a cut foot, but looks like a skulker. Here you, 
Mr. Under-the-Bridge! come from behind that caisson —”’ 

Out of a wood road, a misty opening overarched by tall and 
misty trees, came two or three horsemen, the foremost of whom rode 
up to the battery. “Good-morning, Randolph! General Jackson 
will be by in a moment. General Ewell lies over there on the Front 
Royal road. He has eaten breakfast, and is clanking his spurs and 
swearing as they swore in Flanders.”’ He pointed with his gaunt- 
leted hand, turning as he did so in the saddle. The action brought 
recognition of Cleave’s presence upon the road. Stafford ceased 
speaking and sat still, observing the other with narrowed eyes. 

Cleave addressed the figure, which, there being no help for it, 
had come from behind the caisson. ‘‘ You, Dagg, of course! Strag- 
gling or deserting —I wonder which this time! Are you not 
ashamed ?”’ 

“Gawd, major! I just could n’t keep up. I got a cut foot —” 

“Sit down on that rock. — Take off your shoe — what is left 
of it. Now, let me see. Is that the cut, that scratch above the 
ankle ?” 


THE VALLEY PIKE 303 


“Tt ain’t how deep it is. It’s how it hurts.” 

“There is no infantryman to-day who is not footsore and tired. 
Only the straggler or deserter has as few marks as you to show. 
There is the company, down the road, in the field. To-night I shall 
find out if you have been with it all the day. Go! You disgrace the 
very mountains where you were born —”’ 

Beyond the guns was a misty bend of the road. The light was 
stronger, in the east a slender streamer of carnation; the air dank, 
cool and still. On the edge of Kernstown battlefield a cock crew; a 
second horn came faintly. Very near at hand sounded a jingle of 
accoutrement; Stonewall Jackson, two or three of the staff with him, 
came around the turn and stopped beside the guns. The men about 
them and the horses, and on the roadside, drew themselves up and 
saluted. Jackson gave his slow quiet nod. He was all leaf bronze 
from head to foot, his eyes just glinting beneath the old forage cap. 
He addressed the lieutenant. “ You will advance, sir, in just three 
quarters of an hour. There are batteries in place upon the ridge be- 
fore us. You will take position there, and you will not leave until 
ordered.” His eyes fell upon Stafford. ‘Have you come from 
General Ewell ?” 

“Ves, general. He sends his compliments, and says he is ready.” 

“Good! Good! — What is this soldier doing here?’”’ He looked 
at Steve. 

“Tt is a straggler, sir, from my regiment. Lieutenant Randolph 
picked him up —”’ 

“Found him under a bridge, sir. I’d call him a deserter —”’ 

Steve writhed as though, literally, the eyes were cold steel and 
had pinned him down. “Gawd, general! I did n’t desert! Cross my 
heart and may I go to hell if I did! I was awful tired — hungry and 
thirsty — and my head swimming — I just dropped out, meaning 
to catch up after a bit! I had a sore foot. Major Cleave’s awful 
hard on me —”’ 

““You’re a disgrace to your company,” said Cleave. “‘If we did 
not need even shadows and half men you would be drummed home 
to Thunder Run, there to brag, loaf, and rot —”’ 

Steve began to whine. “I meant to catch up, I truly did!” His 
eyes, shifting from side to side, met those of Stafford. “‘ Gawd, 
I’m lost —”’ 


304 THE LONG ROLL 


Stafford regarded his quondam prisoner curiously enough. His 
gaze had in it something of cruelty, of pondering, and of question. 
Steve writhed. “I ain’t any better ’n anybody else. Life’s awful! 
Everybody in the world’s agin me. Gawd knows Major Cleave’s 
so —” Cleave made a sound of contempt. 

Stafford spoke. “I do not think he’s actually a deserter. I re- 
member his face. I met him near Middletown, and he gave me his 
regiment and company. ‘There are many stragglers.”’ 

Steve could have fallen and worshipped. ‘‘Don’t care whether 
he did it for me, or jest ’cause he hates that other one! He does hate 
him! ’N I hate him, too— sending me to the guardhouse every whip- 
stitch!” This to himself; outside he tried to look as though he had 
carried the colours from Front Royal, only dropping them momen- 
tarily at that unfortunate bridge. Jackson regarded him with a 
grey-blue eye unreconciled, but finally made his peculiar gesture of 
dismissal. The Thunder Run man saluted and stumbled from the 
roadside into the field, the dead Tiger’s musket in the hollow of his 
arm, his face turned toward Company A. Back in the road Jackson 
turned his eyes on Cleave. “Major, in half an hour you will advance 
with your skirmishers. Do as well as you have done heretofore and 
you will do well — very well. The effect of Colonel Brooke’s wound 
is graver than was thought. He has asked to be retired. After Win- 
chester you will have your promotion.” 

With his staff he rode away —a leaf brown figure, looming 
large in the misty half light, against the red guidons of the east. 
Stafford went with him. Randolph, his cannoneers and drivers 
dropped beside the pieces and were immediately asleep — half an 
hour now was all they had. The horses cropped the pearled wayside 
grass. Far away the cocks were crowing. In the east the red ban- 
nerols widened. There came a faint blowing of bugles. Cleave 
stooped and took up his cloak. 

Steve, stumbling back over the wet field, between the ranks of 
sleeping men, found Company A — that portion of it not with the 
skirmishers. Every soul was asleep. The men lay heavily, some 
drawn into a knot, others with arms flung wide, others on their 
faces. They lay in the dank and chilly dawn as though death had 
reaped the field. Steve lay down beside them. ‘Gawd! when will 
this war be over?” 


THE VALLEY PIKE 305 


He dreamed that he was back at Thunder Run, crouching behind 
a certain boulder at a turn of the road that wound up from the Val- 
ley. He had an old flintlock, but in his dream he did not like it, and 
it changed to one of the beautiful modern rifles they were beginning 
to take from the Yankees. There were no Yankees on Thunder Run. 
Steve felt assured of that in his dream; very secure and comfortable. 
Richard Cleave came riding up the road on Dundee. Steve lifted 
the rifle to his shoulder and sighted very carefully. It seemed that 
he was not alone behind the boulder. A shadowy figure with a sword, 
and a star on his collar, said, “Aim at the heart.’”’ In the dream he 
fired, but before the smoke could clear so that he might know his 
luck the sound of the shot changed to clear trumpets, long and wail- 
ing. Steve turned on his side. ‘Reveille! O Gawd!” 

The men arose, the ranks were formed. No breakfast ? — Hairston 
Breckinridge explained the situation. “‘We’re going to breakfast 
in Winchester, men! All the dear old cooks are getting ready for 
us — rolls and waffles and broiled chicken and poached eggs and 
coffee — and all the ladies in muslin and ribbons are putting flowers 
on the table and saying, ‘The Army of the Valley is coming home!’ 
—Isn’t that a Sunday morning breakfast worth waiting for? 
The sooner we whip Banks the sooner we'll be eating it.” 

“Allright. All right,” said the men. “ We’ll whip him all right.” 

““We’re sure to whip him now we’ve got Steve back!” 

“That’s so. Where’ve you been anyway, Steve, and how many 
did you kill on the road ?”’ 

“T killed three,” said Steve. ‘‘General Ewell’s over thar in the 
woods, and he’s going to advance ’longside of us, on the Front Royal 
road. Rockbridge’n the rest of the batteries are to hold the ridge 
up there, no matter what happens! Banks ain’t got but six thousand 
men, and it ought ter be an easy job —”’ 

“Good Lord! Steve’s been absent at a council of war — talking 
familiarly with generals! Always thought there must be more in 
him than appeared, since there could n’t well be less—” 

‘“Band’s playing! “The Girl I Left Behind Me’!” 

“That’s Winchester! Did n’t we have a good time there fore 
and after Bath and Romney? ‘Most the nicest Valley town!— 
and we had to go away and leave it blue as indigo —”’ 

“T surely will be glad to see Miss Fanny again —”’ 


306 THE LONG ROLL 


“Company C over there’s most crazy. It all lives there —” 

“Three miles! That ain’t much. I feel rested. There goes the 
2d! Don’t it swing off long and steady? Lord, we’ve got the hang 
of it at last!” 

‘Will Cleave’s got to be sergeant. —’N he’s wild about a girl in 
Winchester. Says his mother and sister are there, too, and he can’t 
sleep for thinking of the enemy all about them. Children sure do 
grow up quick in war time!”’ 

“A lot of things grow up quick — and a lot of things don’t grow 
at all. There goes the 4th — long and steady! Our turn next.” 

Steve again saw from afar the approach of the nightmare. It 
stood large on the opposite bank of Abraham’s Creek, and he must 
go to meet it. He was wedged between comrades — Sergeant 
Coffin was looking straight at him with his melancholy, bad-tem- 
pered eyes—he could not fall out, drop behind! The backs of his 
hands began to grow cold and his unwashed forehead was damp 
beneath matted, red-brown elf locks. From considerable experience 
he knew that presently sick stomach would set in. When the com- 
pany splashed through Abraham’s Creek he would not look at the 
running water, but when he looked at the slopes he was expected 
presently to climb he saw that there was fighting there and that the 
nightmare attended! Steve closed his eyes.’ “O Gawd, take care 
Grimes". 

Later on, when the ridge was won he found himself, still in the 
company of the nightmare, cowering close to the lock of a rail 
fence that zigzagged along the crest. How he got there he really 
did not know. He had his musket still clutched — his mountain- 
eer’s instinct served for that. Presently he made the discovery that 
he had been firing, had fired thrice,it appeared from his cartridge 
box. He remembered neither firing nor loading, though he had some 
faint recollection of having been upon his knees behind a low stone 
wall—he saw it now at right angles with the rail fence. A clover 
field he remembered because some one had said something about 
four-leaved clovers, and then a shell had come by and the clover 
turned red. Seized with panic he bit a cartridge and loaded. The 
air was rocking; moreover, with the heavier waves came a sharp 
2222-1p! z22222-1p! Heaven and earth blurred together, blended by 
the giant brush of eddying smoke. Steve tasted powder, smelled 


THE VALLEY PIKE 307 


powder. On the other side of the fence, from a battery lower down 
the slope to the guns beyond him two men were running — running 
very swiftly, with bent heads. They ran like people in a pelting rain, 
and between them they carried a large bag or bundle, slung in an 
oilcloth. They were tall and hardy men, and they moved with a 
curious air of determination. ‘“‘Carrying powder! Gawd! before 
I’d be sech a fool — ” A shell came, and burst — burst between 
the two men. There was an explosion, ear-splitting, heart-rending. 
A part of the fence was wrecked; a small cedar tree torn into kin- 
dling. Steve put down his musket, laid his forehead upon the rail 
before him, and vomited. 

The guns were but a few yards above him, planted just below the 
crest, their muzzles projecting over. Steve recognized Rockbridge. 
He must, he thought, have been running away, not knowing where 
he was going, and infernally managed to get up here. The night- 
mare abode with him. His joints felt like water, his heart was 
straightened, stretched, and corded in his bosom like a man upon the 
rack. He pressed close into the angle of the fence, made himself of 
as little compass as his long and gangling limbs allowed, and held 
himself still as an opossum feigning death. Only his watery blue 
eyes wandered — not for curiosity, but that he might see and dodge 
a coming harm. 

Before him the ridge ran steeply down to a narrow depression, 
a little vale, two hundred yards across. On the further side the land 
rose again to as high a hill. Here was a stone fence, which even 
as he looked, leaped fire. Above it were ranged the blue cannon — 
three batteries, well served. North and South, muzzle to muzzle, 
the guns roared across the green hollow. The blue musketrymen 
behind the wall were using minies. Of all death-dealing things 
Steve most hated these. They came with so unearthly a sound — 
zzzz-ip! zzzzz-ip!—a devil noise, a death that shrieked, taunted, and 
triumphed. To-day they made his blood like water. He crouched 
close, a mere lump of demoralization, behind a veil of wild buck- 
wheat. 

Rockbridge was suffering heavily, both from the opposing *Par- 
rotts and from sharpshooters behind the wall. A belated gun came 
straining up the slope, the horses doing mightily, the men cheering. 
There was an opening in a low stone wall across the hillside, below 


308 THE LONG ROLL 


Steve. The gate had been wrenched away and thrown aside, but 
the thick gatepost remained, and it made the passage narrow — 
too narrow for the gun team and the carriage to pass. All stopped 
and there was a colloquy. 

““We’ve got an axe?”’ 

“Yes, captain.” 

“John Agnor, you’ve felled many a tree. Take the axe and cut 
that post down.” 

“Captain, I will be killed!” 

“Then you will be killed doing your duty, John. Get down.” 

Agnor got the axe, swung it and began chopping. The stone wall 
across the hollow blazed more fiercely; the sharpshooters diverted 
their attention from the men and horses higher upon the hill. Agnor 
swung the axe with steadiness; the chips flew far. The post was cut 
almost through before his billet came. In falling he clutched the 
weakened obstruction, and the two came down together. The gun 
was free to pass, and it passed, each cannoneer and driver looking 
once at John Agnor, lying dead with a steady face. It found place 
a few yards above Steve in his corner, and joined in the roar of its 
fellows, throwing solid shot and canister. 

A hundred yards and more to the rear stood a barn. The wounded 
from all the guns, strung like black beads along the crest, dragged 
themselves or were carried to this shelter. Hope rose in Steve’s 
heart. ‘Gawd! I’ll creep through the clover and git there myself.” 
He started on hands and knees, but once out of his corner and the 
shrouding mass of wild buckwheat, terror took him. The minies 
were singing like so many birds. A line of blue musketrymen, posted 
behind cover, somewhat higher than the grey, were firing alike at 
gunners, horses, and the men passing to and fro behind the fighting 
line. Steve saw a soldier hobbling to the barn throw up his arms, 
and pitch forward. Two carrying a third between them were both 
struck. The three tried to drag themselves further, but only the 
one who had been borne by the others succeeded. A shell pierced 
the roof of the barn, burst and set the whole on fire. Steve turned 
like a lizard and went back to the lock of the fence and the tattered 
buckwheat. He could hear the men talking around the gun just 
beyond. They spoke very loud, because the air was shaken like an 
ocean in storm. They were all powder-grimed, clad only in trousers 


THE VALLEY PIKE 309 


and shirt, the shirt open over the breast, and sleeves rolled up. 
They stood straight, or bent, or crept about the guns, all their 
movements swift and rhythmic. Sometimes they were seen clearly; 
sometimes the smoke swallowed them. When seen they looked larger 
than life, when only heard their voices came as though earth and 
air were speaking. ‘Sponge out. — All night. Fire! Hot while it 
lasts, but it won’t last long. I have every confidence in Old Jack and 
Old Dick. Drat that primer! All right! — Three seconds! Jerusa- 
lem! that created a sensation. The Louisianians are coming up that 
cleft between the hills. All the Stonewall regiments in the centre. 
Ewell to flank their left. Did you ever hear Ewell swear? Look 
out! wheel’s cut through. Lanyard’s shot away. Take handker- 
chiefs. Have n’t got any —tear somebody’s shirt. Number 1! 
Number 2! Look out! look out — Give them hell. Good Heaven! 
here’s Old Jack. General, we hope you’ll go away from here! 
We'll stay it out — give you our word. Let them enfilade ahead! 
— but you’d better go back, sir.”’ 

“Thank you, captain, but I wish to see —”’ 

A minie ball imbedded itself in a rail beside Steve’s cheek. Before 
he could recover from this experience a shell burst immediately in 
front of his panel. He was covered with earth, a fragment of shell 
sheared away the protecting buckwheat and a piece of rail struck him 
in the back with force. He yelled, threw down his musket and ran. 

He passed John Agnor lying dead by the gateway, and he reached 
somehow the foot of the hill and the wide fields between the embat- 
tled ridges and the Valley pike, the woods and the Front Royal 
road. He now could see the Federal line of battle, drawn on both 
sides of the pike, but preponderantly to the westward. They were 
there, horse and foot and bellowing artillery, and they did not look 
panic-stricken. Their flags were flying, their muskets gleaming. 
They had always vastly more and vastly better bands than had the 
grey, and they used them more frequently. They were playing now 
— a brisk and stirring air, sinking and swelling as the guns boomed 
or were silent. The mist was up, the sun shone bright. ‘‘Gawd!” 
thought Steve. ‘“I’d better be there than here! We ain’t a-goin’ to 
win, anyhow. They’ve got more cannon, and a bigger country, and 
all the ships, and pockets full of money. Once’t I had a chance to 
move North —” 


310 THE LONG ROLL 


He had landed in a fringe of small trees by a little runlet, and now, 
under this cover, he moved irresolutely forward. “Ef I walked 
toward them with my hands up, they surely would n’t shoot. 
What’s that ? — Gawd! Look at Old Jack a-comin’! Reckon I’ll 
stay — Told them once’t on Thunder Run I would n’t move North 
for nothing! Yaaathhhh! Yaaaathhh —” 

Vaathhhhh! Yaaihhhhh! Yaaaihh! Yaaaaaaaithhhh! Ten thou- 
sand grey soldiers with the sun on their bayonets — 


There came by a riderless horse, gentle enough, unfrightened, 
wanting only to drink at the little stream. Steve caught him with- 
out difficulty, climbed into the saddle and followed the army. The 
army was a clanging, shouting, triumphant thing to follow — to 
follow into the Winchester streets, into a town that was mad with 
joy. A routed army was before it, pouring down Loudoun Street, 
pouring down Main Street, pouring down every street and lane, 
pouring out of the northern end of the town, out upon the Martins- 
burg pike, upon the road to the frontier, the road to the Potomac. 
There was yet firing in narrow side streets, a sweeping out of single 
and desperate knots of blue. Church bells were pealing, women 
young and old were out of doors, weeping for pure joy, laughing for 
the same, praising, blessing, greeting sons, husbands, lovers, bro- 
thers, friends, deliverers. A bearded figure, leaf brown, on a sorrel 
nag, answered with a gravity strangely enough not without sweet- 
ness the acclamation with which he was showered, sent an aide to 
hasten the batteries, sent another with an order to General George H. 
Steuart commanding cavalry, jerked his hand into the air and swept 
on in pursuit out by the Martinsburg pike. The infantry followed 
him, hurrahing. They tasted to-day the sweets of a patriot soldiery 
relieving a patriot town. The guns came thundering through, the 
horses doing well, the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving 
caps and hats, bowing to half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, 
praises, blessings. Ewell’s division poured through — Ewell on 
the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing his men forward, pithily answer- 
ing the happy people, all the while the church bells clanging. The 
town was in a clear flame of love, patriotism, martial spirit, every 
heart enlarged, every house thrown open to the wounded whom, grey 
and blue alike, the grey surgeons were bringing in. 


THE VALLEY PIKE q¥1 


For fear to keep him, Steve had left his captured horse’s back and 
let him go loose. Now on foot and limping terribly, trying to look 
equal parts fire-eater and woe-begone, he applied to a grey-headed 
couple in the dooryard of a small clean home. Would they give 
a hurt soldier a bed and something to eat? Why, of course, of course 
they would! Come right in! What command? 

“The Stonewall Brigade, sir. You see, ’t was this a-way. I was 
helping serve a gun, most of the gunners being strewed around 
dead — and we infantrymen having to take a hand, and a thirty 
pound Parrott came and burst right over us! I was stooping, like 
this, my thumb on the vent, like that —and a great piece struck me 
in the back! I just kin hobble. Thank you, ma’am! You are better 
to me than I deserve.”’ 


CHAPTER XXIII 


MOTHER AND SON 


wounded boy she had been tending. He was asleep; had 

gone to sleep calling her “ Maman”’ and babbling of wild- 
fowl on the bayou. She kissed him lightly on the forehead “ for Will”’ 
— Will, somewhere on the Martinsburg pike, battling in heat and 
dust, battling for the Confederacy, driving the foe out of Virginia, 
back across the Potomac — Will who, little more than a year ago, 
had been her ‘‘baby,”’ whom she kissed each night when he went to 
sleep in his little room next hers at Three Oaks. She straightened 
herself and looked around for more work. The large room, the 
“‘chamber”’ of the old and quiet house in which she and Miriam had 
stayed on when in March the army had withdrawn from Win- 
chester, held three wounded. Upon the four-post bed, between white 
valance and tester, lay a dying officer. His wife was with him, and a 
surgeon, who had found the ball but could not stop the hemorrhage. 
A little girl sat on the bed, and every now and then put forth a 
hand and timidly stroked her father’s clay-cold wrist. On the floor, 
on a mattress matching the one on which the boy lay, was stretched 
a gaunt giant from some backwoods or mountain clearing. Mar- 
garet knelt beside him and he smiled up at her. “TI ain’t much hurt, 
and I ain’t sufferin’ to amount to nothin’. Ef this pesky butternut 
would n’t stick in this here hurt place—’”’ She cut the shirt from a 
sabre wound with the scissors hanging at her waist, then bringing 
water bathed away the grime and dried blood. ‘“You’re right,” 
she said. “It is n’t much of a cut. It will soon heal.” They spoke 
in whispers, not to disturb the central group. “But you don’t look 
easy. You are still suffering. What is it?” 

“Tt ain’t nothing. It’s my foot, that a shell kind of got in the way 
of. But don’t you tell anybody — for fear they might want to cut 
it off, ma’am.”’ 

She looked and made a pitying sound. The officer on the bed had 


MM ‘rooms CLEAVE drew her arms gently from under the 


MOTHER AND SON 313 


now breathed his last. She brought the unneeded surgeon to the 
crushed ankle, summoned to help him another of the women in the 
house, then moved to the four-poster and aided the tearless widow, 
young and soon again to become a mother, to lay the dead calm and 
straight. The little girl began to shake and shudder. She took her 
in her arms and carried her out of the room. She found Miriam 
helping in the storeroom. ‘‘Get the child’s doll and take her into 
the garden for a little while. She is cold as ice; if she begins to cry 
don’t stop her. When she is better, give her to Hannah and you go 
sit beside the boy who is lying on the floor in the chamber. If he 
wakes, give him water, but don’t let him lift himself. He looks 
like Will.” 

In the hall a second surgeon met her. ‘‘ Madam, will you come 
help? I’ve got to take off a poor fellow’s leg.”” They entered a room 
together — the parlour this time, with the windows flung wide and 
the afternoon sunlight lying in pools among the roses of the carpet. 
Two mahogany tables had been put together, and the soldier lay 
atop, the crushed leg bared and waiting. The surgeon had an 
assistant and the young man’s servant was praying in a corner. 
Margaret uttered a low, pained exclamation. This young lieutenant 
had been well liked last winter in Winchester. He had been much at 
this house. He had a good voice and she had played his accompani- 
ments while he sang — oh, the most sentimental of ditties! Miriam 
had liked him very well — they had read together — “ The Pilgrims 
of the Rhine’’— Goldsmith — Bernardin de Saint Pierre. He had 
a trick of serenading — danced well. She put her cheek down to 
his hand. ‘My poor, poor boy! My poor, brave boy!” 

The lieutenant smiled at her — rather a twisted smile, shining 
out of a drawn white face. “I’ve got to be brave on one leg. 
Anyhow, Mrs. Cleave, I can still sing and read. How is Miss 
Miriam?” 

The assistant placed a basin and cloths. The surgeon gave a 
jerk of his head. ‘‘ You come on this side, Mrs. Cleave.”’ 

“No chloroform?” 

“No chloroform. Contraband of war. Damned chivalric con- 
tesks: 

Late in the afternoon, as she was crossing the hall upon some other 
of the long day’s tasks she heard a group of soldiers talking. There 


314 THE LONG ROLL 


were infantry officers from the regiments left in town, and a dusty 
cavalryman or two—riders from the front with dispatches or orders. 
One with an old cut glass goblet of water in his hand talked and drank, 
talked and drank. 

“The aide came to George H. Steuart and said, ‘ General Jackson 
orders you to pursue vigorously. He says lose no time. He says 
kill and capture; let as few as possible get to the Potomac. Do 
your best.’” He filled his glass again from the pitcher standing by. 
“Steuart answers that he’s of General Ewell’s Division. ‘Must take 
his orders from General Ewell.” 

“West Point notions! Good Lord!” 

“Says the aide, ‘General Jackson commands General Ewell, and 
so may command you. His orders are that you shall pursue vigor- 
ously’ — Says Steuart, ‘I will send a courier to find General Ewell. 
If his orders are corroboratory I will at once press forward —’ ” 

‘Good God! did he think Banks would wait ?”’ 

“Old Dick was in front; he was n’t behind. Took the aide two 
hours to find him, sitting on Rifle, swearing because he did n’t see 
the cavalry! Well, he made the air around him blue, and sent back 
highly ‘corroboratory’ orders. Steuart promptly ‘pressed forward 
vigorously,’ but Lord! Banks was halfway to the Potomac, his 
troops streaming by every cow path, Stonewall and the infantry ad- 
vance behind him — but Little Sorrel could n’t do it alone.” He 
put down the glass. “Steuart’ll catch it when Old Jack reports. 
We might have penned and killed the snake, and now it’s gotten 
away!” 

“Never mind! It’s badly hurt and it’s quitting Virginia at a 
high rate of speed. It’s left a good bit of its skin behind, too. Hawks 
says he’s damned if the army shan’t have square meals for a week, 
and Crutchfield’s smiling over the guns —”’ 

“Falligant says the men are nigh dead, officers nodding in their 
saddles, giving orders in their sleep. Falligant says —” 

Margaret touched one of the group upon the arm. He swung 
round in the hall that was darkening toward sunset and swept 
off his hat. “Do you think, sir, that there will be fighting to- 
night?” 

“TI think not, madam. There may be skirmishes of course — our 
men may cut off parties of the enemy. But there will be no general 


MOTHER AND SON 315 


battle. It is agreed that General Banks will get across the Potomac. 
The troups will bivouac this side of Martinsburg.” 

The wounded in the house slept or did not sleep. The young 
widow sat beside the dead officer. She would not be drawn away — 
said that she was quite comfortable, not unhappy, there was so 
much happiness to remember. Hannah found a nook for the little 
girl and put her to bed. The officers went away. There were a 
thousand things to do, and, also, they must snatch some sleep, or 
the brain would reel. The surgeon, hollow-eyed, grey with fatigue, 
dropping for sleep, spoke at the open front door to the elderly lady 
of the house and to Margaret Cleave. ‘Lieutenant Waller will die, 
I am afraid, though always while there is life there is hope. No, 
there is nothing — I have given Mrs. Cleave directions, and his 
boy is a good nurse. I’ll come back myself about midnight. That 
Louisiana youngster is all right. You might get two men and move 
him from that room. No; the other won’t lose the foot. He, too, 
might be moved, if you can manage it. I’ll be back —” 

“T wish you might sleep yourself, doctor.” 

“Should n’t mind it. I don’t expect you women do much sleep- 
ing either. Got to do without like coffee forawhile. Funny world, 
funny life, funny death, funny universe. Could give whoever made 
it a few points myself. Excuse me, ladies, I hardly know what I am 
saying. Yes, thank you, I see the step. I’ll come back about mid- 
night.” 

The old yards up and down the old street were much trampled, 
shrubbery broken, fences down, the street thick dust, and still 
strewn with accoutrements that had been thrown away, with here 
and there a broken wagon. Street and pavement, there was passing 
and repassing — the life of the rear of an army, and the faring to 
and fro on many errands of the people of the relieved town. There 
were the hospitals and there were the wounded in private houses. 
There were the dead, and all the burials for the morrow — the ne- 
groes digging in the old graveyard, and the children gathering 
flowers. There were the living to be cared for, the many hungry 
to be fed. All the town was exalted, devoted, bent on service—a 
little city raised suddenly to a mountain platform, set in a strange, 
high light, fanned by one of the oldest winds, and doing well with 
a clear intensity. 


316 THE LONG ROLL 


Miriam came and stood beside her mother, leaning her head upon 
the other’s breast. The two seemed like elder and younger sister, 
no more. There was a white jasmine over the porch, in the yard 
the fireflies were beginning to sparkle through the dusk. ‘“ Dear 
child, are you very tired?” 

“T am not tired at all. That Louisiana boy called me ‘Zephine’ — 
‘Zephine!’ ‘Zephine, your eyes are darker, but your lips are not so 
red.’ He said he kept all my letters over his heart — only he tore 
them up before the battle, tore them into little bits and gave them 
to the wind, so that if he fell into his hands ‘]’ennemi’ might not 
read them.” 

“The doctor says that he will do well.” 

“He is like Will. Oh, mother, I feel ten thousand years old! I 
feel as though I had always lived.” 

“T, too, dear. Always. I have always borne children and they 
have always gone forth to war. They say there will be no fighting 
to-night.”’ 

She put her daughter slightly from her and leaned forward, 
listening. ‘‘That is Richard. His foot strikes that way upon the 
Street... 

In the night, in his mother’s chamber Cleave waked from three 
hours of dreamless sleep. She stood beside him. ‘‘ My poor, dead 
man, I hated to keep my word.” 

He smiled. ‘‘It would have been as hard to wake up at the end of 
a week! — Mother, I am so dirty!” 

“The servants have brought you plenty of hot water, and we have 
done the best we could with your uniform. Here is fresh underwear, 
and a beautiful shirt. I went myself down to the officer in charge 
of captured stores. He was extremely good and let me have all 
I wished. Tullius is here. He came in an hour ago with Dundee. 
I will send him up. When you are dressed come into the hall. I will 
have something there for you to eat.” 

Richard drew her hand to his lips. “I wonder who first thought 
of so blessed an institution as a mother? Only a mother could have 
thought of it, and so there you are again in the circle!”’ 

When he was dressed he found in the wide upper hall without his 
door, spread upon a small leaf table, a meal frugal and delicate. A 
breeze came through the open window, and with it the scent’ of 


MOTHER AND SON 317 


jasmine. The wind blew the candle flame until his mother, step- 
ping lightly, brought a glass shade and set it over the silver stick. 
Small moths flew in and out, and like a distant ground swell came 
the noise of the fevered town. The house itself was quiet after the 
turmoil of the day; large halls and stair in dimness, the ill or 
wounded quiet or at least not loudly complaining. Now and then a 
door softly opened or closed; a woman’s figure or that of some col- 
oured servant passed from dimness to dimness. They passed and 
the whole was quiet again. Mother and son spoke low. “I will not 
wake Miriam until just time to say good-bye. She is overwrought, 
poor child! She had counted so on seeing Will.” 

“We will press on now, I think, to Harper’s Ferry. But events 
may bring us this way again. The 2d is bivouacked by a little 
stream, and I saw him fast asleep. He is growing strong, hardy, 
bronzed. It is striking twelve. Tullius is saddling Dundee.” 

“There will be no fighting in the morning?” 

“No. Not, perhaps, until we reach Harper’s Ferry. Banks will 
get across to Williamsport to-night. For the present he is off the 
board. Saxton at Harper’s Ferry has several thousand men, and he 
will be at once heavily reinforced from Washington. It is well for 
us and for Richmond that that city is so nervous.” 

‘General Jackson is doing wonderful work, is he not, Richard ?” 

“Yes. It is strange to see how the heart of the army has turned 
to him. ‘Old Jack’ can do no wrong. But he is not satisfied with 
to-day’s work.” 

“But if they are out of Virginia —”’ 

“They should be in Virginia — prisoners of war. It was a cav- 
alry failure. — Well, it cannot be helped.”’ 

“Will you cross at Harper’s Ferry?” 

“With all my heart I wish we might! Defensive war should 
always be waged in the enemy’s territory. But I am certain that we 
are working with the explicit purpose of preventing McDowell’s 
junction with McClellan and the complete investment of Richmond 
which would follow that junction. We are going to threaten Wash- 
ington. The government there may be trusted, I think, to recall 
McDowell. Probably also they will bring upon our rear Frémont from 
the South Branch. That done, we must turn and meet them both.’” 

“Oh, war! Over a year now it has lasted! There are so many 


318 THE LONG ROLL 


in black, and the church bells have always a tolling sound. And 
then the flowers bloom, and we hear laughter as we knit.” 

“All colours are brighter and all sounds are deeper. If there is 
horror, there is also much that is not horror. And there is nobility 
as well as baseness. And the mind adapts itself, and the ocean is 
deeper than we think. Somewhere, of course, lies the shore of 
Brotherhood, and beyond that the shore of Oneness. It is not un- 
likely, I think, that we may reinforce Johnston at Richmond.” 

“Then Miriam and I will make our way there also. How long 
will it last, Richard — the war?” 

“Tt may last one year and it may last ten. The probability is 
perhaps five.” 

“Five years! All the country will be grey-haired. e 

“War is a forge, mother. Many things will be forged — more of 
iron perhaps than of gold.” 

“You have no doubt of the final victory?” 

“Tf I ever have I put it from me. I do not doubt the armies nor 
the generals — and, God knows, I do not doubt the women at home! 
If I am not so sure in all ways of the government, at least no man 
doubts its integrity and its purpose. The President, if he is clear 
and narrow rather than clear and broad, if he sometimes plays the 
bigot, if he is a good field officer rather than the great man of affairs 
we need — yet he is earnest, disinterested, able, a patriot. And 
Congress does its best — is at least eloquent and fires the heart. 
Our crowding needs are great and our resources small; it does what 
it can. The departments work hard. Benjamin, Mallory, Ran- 
dolph, Meminger — they are all good men. And the railroad men 
and the engineers and the chemists and the mechanics — all so 
wonderfully and pathetically ingenious, labouring day and night, 
working miracles without material, making bricks without straw. 
Arsenals, foundries, powder-mills, workshop, manufactories — all 
in a night, out of the wheat fields! And the runners of blockades, 
and the river steamer men, the special agents, the clerks, the work- 
ers of all kind —a territory large as Europe and every man and 
woman in the field in one aspect or another! If patriotism can save 
and ability, fortitude, endurance, we are saved. And yet I think 
of my old ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ and of all the causes that have been 
lost. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I see all our 


MOTHER AND SON 319 


blocked ports — and the Mississippi, slipping from our hands. I do 
not believe that England will come to our help. There is a senti- 
ment for us, undoubtedly, but like the island mists it stays at home.”’ 

He rose from the table. ‘‘And yet the brave man fights and must 
hope. Hope is the sky above him — and the skies have never really 
fallen. I do not know how I will come out of war! I know how I 
went into it, but no man knows with what inner change he will 
come out. Enough now, being in, to serve with every fibre.”’ 

She shaded her eyes with her hand. With her soft brown hair, 
with her slender maturity, with the thin fine bit of lace at her neck, 
against the blowing curtains and in the jasmine scent she suggested 
something fine and strong and sweet, of old time, of all time. “I 
know that you will serve with every fibre,” she said. “I know it be- 
cause I also shall serve that way.” Presently she dropped her hand 
and looked up at him with a face, young, soft, and bright, lit from 
within. “And so at last, Richard, you are happy in the lovely ways!” 

He put something in her hand. “ Would you like to see it? She 
sent it to me, two weeks ago. It does not do her justice.” 

Margaret laughed. “‘They never do! But I agree with you — 
and yet, it is lovely! Her eyes were always wonderful, and she 
smiles like some old picture. I shall love her well, Richard.” 

“And she you. Mother, the country lies on my heart. I see a 
dark’ning sky and many graveyards, and I hear, now ‘ Dixie,’ now a 
Dead March. And yet, through it all there runs a singing stream, 
under a blue Heaven —”’ 

A little later, Miriam having waked, he said a lingering, fond 
good-bye, and leaving them both at the gate in the dead hour be- 
fore the dawn, rode away on Dundee, Tullius following him, down 
the pike, toward the sleeping army. He passed the pickets and came 
to the first regiment before dawn; to the 65th just as the red signals 
showed in the east. It was a dawn like yesterday’s. Far and wide 
lay the army, thousands of men, motionless on the dew-drenched 
earth, acorns fallen from the tree of war. He met an officer, plod- 
ding through the mist, trying to read in the dim light a sheaf of 
orders which he carried. ‘‘Good-morning, adjutant.” 

“‘Good-morning. Richard Cleave, isn’tit? Hear you are going to 
be a general. Hear Old Jack said so.” 

Cleave laughed, a vibrant sound, jest and determination both. 


320 THE LONG ROLL 


“‘Of course I am! I settled that at sixteeen, one day when I was 
ploughing corn. How they all look, scattered wide like that!” 

“Reveille not until six. The general’s going to beat the devil 
round the stump. Going to have a Sunday on a Monday. Rest, 
clean up, divine service. Need all three, certainly need two. Good 
record the last few weeks— reason to be thankful. Well, good-bye! 
Always liked you, Cleave!” 

Reveille sounded, and the army arose. Breakfast was a sump- 
tuous thing, delicately flavoured with compliments upon the taste, 
range, and abundance of the Federal commissariat. Roll call followed, 
with the moment’s full pause after names that were not answered 
to. A general order was read. 


Within four weeks this army has made long and rapid marches, 
fought six combats and two battles, signally defeating the enemy in 
each one, captured several stands of colours and pieces of artillery, 
with numerous prisoners and vast medical, ordnance, and army stores ; 
and finally driven the host that was ravaging our country inio utter 
rout. The general commanding would warmly express to the officers and 
men under his command, his joy.in their achievements and his thanks 
for their brilliant gallantry in action and their patient obedience 
under the hardship of forced marches ; often more painful to the brave 
soldier than the dangers of battle. The explanation of the severe exer- 
tions to which the commanding general called the army, which were 
endured by them with such cheerful confidence in him, 1s now given, in 
the victory of yesterday. He receives this proof of their confidence in the 
past with pride and gratitude, and asks only a similar confidence in the 
future. 

But his chief duty to-day, and that of the army, is to recognize de- 
voutly the hand of a protecting providence in the brilliant successes of 
the last three days, and to make the oblation of our thanks to God for his 
mercies to us and to our country, in heartfelt acts of religious worship. 
For this purpose the troops will remain in camp to-day, suspending as 
far as practicable all military exercises ; and the chaplains of regiments 
will hold divine service in their several charges at four o'clock P.M. 


At four the general went to church with the 37th Virginia. The 
doxology sung, the benediction pronounced, he told the chaplain 
that he had been edified exceedingly, and he looked it. There were 


MOTHER AND SON ROE 


times when it might be said quite truly that his appearance was 
that of an awkward knight of the Holy Grail. 

Headquarters was a farmhouse, a small, cosy place, islanded in a 
rolling sea of clover. About dusk Allan Gold, arriving here, found 
himself admitted to the farmer’s parlour. Here were a round table 
with lamps, a clerk or two writing, and several members of Jack- 
son’s military family. The general himself came in presently, and 
sat down at the table. A dark, wiry man, with a highly intellectual 
face, who had been going over papers by a lamp in the corner of the 
room, came forward and saluted. 

“Very well, Jarrow. Have you got the mail bag?” 

“Yes, sir.” He laid upon the table a small, old, war-worn leather 
pouch. “It won’t hold much, but enough. Headquarters’ mail. 
Service over the mountain, to the Manassas Gap for the first Rich- 
mond train. Profound ignorance on General Jackson’s part of Mc- 
Dowell’s whereabouts. The latter’s pickets gobble up courier, and 
information meant for Richmond goes to Washington.” 

‘““Who is the volunteer, Gold ?”’ 

‘““A boy named Billy Maydew, sir. Company A, 65th. A Thun- 
der Run man.” 

“He understands that he is to be captured ?” 

“Yes, sir. Both he and the mail bag, especially the mail bag. 
After it is safe prisoner, and he has given a straight story, he can 
get away if he is able. There’s no object in his going North?” 

“None at all. Let me see the contents, Jarrow.” 

Jarrow spread them on the table. ‘“‘I thought it best, sir, to in- 
clude a few of a general nature —”’ 

“T thought of that. Here are copies of various letters received 
from Richmond. They are now of no special value. I will return 
them with a memorandum on the packet, ‘ Received on such a date 
and now returned.’”’ He drew out a packet, tied with red tape. 
“Run them over, Jarrow.”’ 

Jarrow read aloud, — 

Mosite, March rst, 1862. 
His EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS, 
PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA: 

Sir, — The subject of permitting cotton to leave our Southern 
ports clandestinely has had some attention from me, and I have 


322 THE LONG ROLL 


come to the conclusion that it is a Yankee trick that should have 
immediate attention from the Governmental authorities of this 
country. The pretence is that we must let it go forward to buy arms 
and munitions of war, and I fear the fate of the steamer Calhoun 
illustrates the destination of these arms and munitions of war after 
they are bought with our cotton. Her commander set her on fire 
and the Yankees put her out just in time to secure the prize. This 
cotton power is a momentous question — 


“Very good. The next, Jarrow.” 


RICHMOND, VA., February 22d. 
Hon. J. P. BENJAMIN, 
SECRETARY OF WAR: 
Sir, — I have the honour to state there are now many volunteers 


from Maryland who are desirous of organizing themselves as soon 
as possible into companies, regiments, and brigades — 


“Good! good! The next, Jarrow.” 
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, 
MILLEDGEVILLE, GA. 
His EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS: 
Sir, —I have the pleasure to inform you that in response 
to your requisition on Georgia for twelve additional regiments of 


troops she now tenders you thirteen regiments and three battal- 
Ions — 


“Good! The next.”’ 


Havana, March 22d, 1862. 
Hon. J. P. BENJAmin, 
SECRETARY OF WAR, RICHMOND. 
Sir, — Our recent reverses in Tennessee and on the seacoast, 
magnified by the Northern press, have had a tendency to create 
doubt in the minds of our foreign friends here as to our ultimate 


success. I have resisted with all my power this ridiculous fear of the 
timid — 


“Lay that aside. It might jeopardize the agent. The next.” 


MOTHER AND SON 323 
“Copy of a proposed General Order. 


“ War DEPARTMENT 
“‘ ADJT. AND Insp. GENERAL’S OFFICE. 
“No. 1. General officers and officers in command of departments, 
districts, and separate posts will make a detail of men from their 
commands to work the nitre caves which may be situated within 
the limits of their respective commands —”’ 


“Good! The next.” 

SURGEON GENERAL’S OFFICE, 
RICHMOND, VA. 

It is the policy of all Nations at all times, especially such as at 
present exist in our Confederacy, to make every effort to develop 
its internal resources, and to diminish its tribute to foreigners by 
supplying its necessities from the productions of its own soil. This 
observation may be considered peculiarly applicable to the appro- 
priation of our indigenous medicinal substances of the vegetable 
kingdom, and with the view of promoting this object the inclosed 
pamphlet embracing many of the more important medicinal plants 
has been issued for distribution to the medical officers of the Army 
of the Confederacy now in the field. You are particularly instructed to 
call the attention of those of your corps to the propriety of collect- 
ing and preparing with care such of the within enumerated reme- 
dial agents or others found valuable, as their respective charges may 
require during the present summer and coming winter. Our forests 
and Savannahs furnish our materia medica with a moderate number 
of narcotics and sedatives, and an abundant supply of tonics, as- 
tringents, aromatics and demulcents, while the list of anodynes, 
emetics and cathartics remains in a comparative degree incom- 
plete — 


“Very good! The next, Jarrow —”’ 


RICHMOND, FREDERICKSBURG AND Potomac RR. 
PRESIDENT’S OFFICE. 
Hon. GEORGE W. RANDOLPH: 


Dear Sir, — At the risk of seeming tedious, permit me to say that 
my impression that you were mistaken last night in your recollection 
of the extent to which Louis Napoleon used railroads in transporting 
his army into Sardinia is this morning confirmed by a gentleman 


324 THE LONG ROLL 


who is a most experienced and well-informed railroad officer, and is 
also the most devoted student of geography and military history, 
with the most accurate and extraordinary memory for every detail, 
however minute, of battles and all other military operations that I 
have ever met with. He is positive in his recollection that not less 
than 100,000 and probably more, of that army were gradually con- 
centrated at Toulon and sent thence by sea to Genoa, and the rest 
were during some weeks being concentrated at a little town on the 
confines of France and Italy, whence they were transferred, partly 
on foot and partly on a double-track railroad, into Sardinia. The 
capacity of a double-track railroad, adequately equipped like the 
European railroads, may be moderately computed at five times that 
of a single-track road like those of the Confederate States. For the 
sudden and rapid movement of a vanguard of an army, to hold in 
check an enemy till reinforced, or of a rear guard to cover a retreat, 
or of any other portion of an army which must move suddenly and 
rapidly, and for the transportation of ordnance, ammunition, com- 
missary and other military supplies, railroads are available and in- 
valuable to an army. And when these objects of prime necessity are 
attained, they can advantageously carry more troops according to 
the amount of the other transportation required, the distance, their 
force, and equipment, etc. But to rely on them as a means of trans- 
porting any large body of troops beside what is needed to supply and 
maintain them, is certainly a most dangerous delusion, and must 
inevitably result in the most grievous disappointments and fatal 
consequence. 
Very respectfully and truly yours, etc. 
Po: V< DANIEL, ]R: 


P. S. Asa railroad officer, interest would prompt me to advocate 
the opposite theory about this matter, for troops constitute the most 
profitable, if not the only profitable, part of any transportation by 
railroads. But I cannot be less a citizen and patriot because I am a 
railroad officer. 

“Good! good. The next, Jarrow.” 

“ Copy of resolutions declaring the sense of Congress. 


“Whereas the United States are waging war against the Con- 
federate States with the avowed purpose of compelling the latter to 


MOTHER AND SON 325 


reunite with them under the same constitution and government, and 
whereas the waging of war with such an object is in direct opposi- 
tion to the sound Republican maxim that ‘all government rests 
upon the consent of the governed’ and can only tend to consolida- 
tion in the general government and the consequent destruction of the 
rights of the States, and whereas, this result being attained the two 
sections can only exist together in the relation of the oppressor and 
the oppressed, because of the great preponderance of power in the 
Northern section, coupled with dissimilarity of interest; and whereas 
we, the Representatives of the people of the Confederate States, in 
Congress assembled, may be presumed to know the sentiments of 
said people, having just been elected by them. Therefore, 

“Be it resolved by the Congress of the Confederate States of Amer- 
ica that this Congress do solemnly declare and publish to the world 
that it is the unalterable determination of the people of the Confed- 
erate States, in humble reliance upon Almighty God, to suffer all 
the calamities of the most protracted war —”’ 


“Just so. That will do for this packet. Now what have you 
eter: 

“These are genuine soldiers’ letters, sir — the usual thing — inci- 
dents of battle, wounds, messages, etc. They are all optimistic in 
tone, but for the rest tell no news. I have carefully opened, gone 
over, and reclosed them.” 

‘““Good! good! Let Robinson, there, take a list of the names. 
Lieutenant Willis, you will see each of the men and tell them they 
must rewrite their letters. These were lost. Now, Jarrow.” 

“These are the ones to the point, sir. I had two written this 
morning, one this afternoon. They are all properly addressed and 
signed, and dated from this bivouac. The first.” 


My DEAR FATHER, — A glorious victory yesterday! Little cost 
to us and Banks swept from the Valley. We are in high spirits, con- 
fident that the tide has turned and that the seat of war will be 
changed. Of late the army has grown like a rolling snowball. Per- 
haps thirty thousand here — 


An aide uttered a startled laugh. “‘Pray be quiet, gentlemen,” 
said Jackson. 


326 THE LONG ROLL 


Thirty thousand here, and a large force nearer the mountains. 
Recruits are coming in all the time; good, determined men. I truly 
feel that we are invincible. I write in haste, to get this in the bag we 
are sending to the nearest railway station. Dear love to all. 

Aff’y your son, 
JouHN SMITH. 


“Good!” said Jackson. “Always deceive, mystify, and mislead 
the enemy. You may thereby save your Capital city. The next.” 
“From one of Ashby’s men, sir.’ 


My DEAR SISTER, — We are now about thirty companies — every 
man from this region who owns or can beg, borrow, or steal a horse 
is coming in. I got at Staunton the plume for my hat you sent. It is 
beautifully long, black, and curling! Imagine me under it, riding 
through Maryland! Forty thousand of us, and the bands playing 
“Dixie”! Old Jack may stand like a stone wall, but by the Lord, 
he moves like a thunderbolt! Best love. Your loving brother, 

WILLIAM PATTERSON. 


“Scratch out the oath, Jarrow. He is writing to a lady, nor 
should it be used toa man. The next.” 


My DEAR FitzHuGH, — Papers, reports, etc., will give you the 
details. Suffice it, that we’ve had a lovely time. A minie drew some 
blood from me — not much, and spilt in a good cause. As you see, I 
am writing with my left hand — the other arm’s in a sling. The 
army’s in the highest spirits — South going North on a visit. 


All the grey bonnets are over the border! 


We hear that all of you in and about Richmond are in excellent 
health and spirits, and that in the face of the Young Napoleon! 
Stronger, too, than he thinks. We hear that McDowell is some- 
where between you and Fredericksburg. Just keep him there, will 
your We’d rather not have him up here just yet. Give my love to 
all my cousins. Will write from the other side of the water. 

Yours as ever, 
PETER FRANCISCO. 


P. S. Of course this is not official, but the impression is strong in 


MOTHER AND SON 327 


the army that the defensive has been dropped and that the geese in 
the other Capitol ought to be cackling if they are not. 


Jarrow drew the whole together. “I thought the three would be 
enough, sir. I never like to overdo.”’ 

“You have the correct idea, Jarrow. Bring the boy in, Gold. I 
want the bag captured early to-morrow.” 

On May the twenty-eighth, fifteen thousand in all, Winder still 
in advance, they moved by Summit Point toward Harper’s Ferry, 
thirty miles away. Ewell on Rifle led the main column, Jackson and 
Little Sorrel marched to-day with the rear, Ashby on the black 
stallion went far ahead with his cavalry. The army moved with 
vigour, in high spirits and through fine weather, a bright, cool day 
with round white clouds in an intense blue sky. When halts were 
made and the generals rode by the resting troops they were loudly 
cheered. The men were talkative; they indulged in laughter and 
lifted voice in song. Speculation ran to and fro, but she wore no 
anxious mien. The army felt a calm confidence, a happy-go-lucky 
mood. It had come into a childlike trust in its commanding gen- 
eral, and that made all the difference in the world. ‘“‘ Where are we 
going? Into Maryland? Don’t know and don’t care! Old Jack 
knows. J think we’re going to Washington — Always did want to 
see it. I think so, too. Going to take its attention off Richmond, 
as the Irishman said when he walked away with the widow at 
the wake. Look at that buzzard up there against that cloud! 
Kingbird’s after him! Right at his eyes! — Say, boys, look at that 
fight!” . 

In the afternoon the Stonewall came to Charlestown, eight miles 
from Harper’s Ferry. Here they found, strongly posted in a wood, 
fifteen hundred Federals with two guns, sent from Harper’s Ferry 
by Saxton. A courier went back to Ewell. Winder, without wait- 
ing for reinforcements, attacked. The fight lasted twenty minutes, 
when the Federal line broke, retreating in considerable disorder. 
The Stonewall, pressing after, came.into view, two miles from the 
Potomac, of the enemy’s guns on Bolivar Heights. 

Saxton, now commanding about seven thousand men,had strongly 
occupied the hills on the southern side of the Potomac. To the north 
the Maryland Heights were held by several regiments and a naval 


328 THE LONG ROLL 


battery of Dahlgren guns. The brigadier commanding received and 


sent telegrams. 
WASHINGTON. 


BRIGADIER-GENERAL SAXTON, 
Harper’s Ferry. 

Copy of Secretary of War’s dispatch to Governors of States. 

‘Send forward all the troops that you can immediately. Banks 
completely routed. Intelligence from various quarters leaves no 
doubt that the enemy, in great force, are advancing on Washing- 
ton. You will please organize and forward immediately all the vol- 
unteer and militia force in your state.”’ 

In addition, the President has notified General McClellan that. 
his return to Washington may be ordered. City in a panic. 

pCa 


HARPER’S FERRY, VIRGINIA, May 31. 


The enemy moved up in force last evening about seven o’clock, in 
a shower of rain, to attack. I opened on them from the position 
which the troops occupy above the town, and from the Dahlgren 
battery on the mountains. The enemy then retired. Their pickets 
attacked ours twice last night within 300 yards of our works. A vol- 
ley from General Slough’s breastworks drove them back. We lost 
one man killed. Enemy had signal-lights on the mountains in every 
direction. Their system of night-signals seems to be perfect. They 
fire on our pickets in every case. My men are overworked. Stood 
by their guns all night in the rain. What has become of Generals 
Frémont and McDowell ? 


R. SAXTON. 
Hon. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War. 


At Williamsport on the Maryland side, twelve miles above, Gen- 
eral Banks likewise sent a telegram to the Government at Wash- 
ington. 

WILLIAMSPORT, May 28, 1862. 


Have received information to-day which I think should be trans- 
mitted, but not published over my name, as J do not credit it alto- 
gether. A merchant from Martinsburg, well known, came to inform 
me that in a confidential conversation with a very prominent seces- 


MOTHER AND SON 329 


sionist, also merchant of that town, he was informed that the policy 
of the South was changed; that they would abandon Richmond, 
Virginia, everything South, and invade Maryland and Washington; 
that every Union soldier would be driven out of the Valley immedi- 
ately. This was on Friday evening, the night of attack on Front 
Royal. Names are given me, and the party talking one who might 
know the rebel plans. A prisoner was captured near Martinsburg 
to-day. He told the truth I am satisfied, as far as he pretended to 
know. He was in the fight at Front Royal and passed through Win- 
chester two hours after our engagement. Hesays the rebel force was 
very large — not less than twenty-five thousand at Winchester and 
6000 or 7000 at Front Royal; that the idea was general among the 
men that they were to invade Maryland. He passed Ashby yester- 
day, who had twenty-eight companies of cavalry under his com- 
mand; was returning from Martinsburg, and moving under orders, 
his men said, to Berryville. There were 2000 rebels at Martinsburg 
when he passed that town yesterday. These reports came to me at 
the same time I received General Saxton’s dispatch and the state- 
ment from my own officer that gooo rebels were near Falling 
Waters, in my front. 
N. P. BANKS, 
Major-General Commanding. 
Hon. E. M. STANTON. 


Friday evening the thirtieth was as dark as Erebus. Clouds had 
been boiling up since dark. Huge portentous masses rose on all 
sides and blotted out the skies. The air was for a time oppressively 
hot and still. The smoke from the guns which had wrangled during 
the day, long and loud, hung low; the smell of powder clung. The 
grey troops massed on Loudoun Heights and along the Shenandoah 
wiped the sweat from their brows. Against the piled clouds signal- 
lights burned dull and red, stars of war communicating through the 
sultry night. The clouds rose higher yet and the lightnings began to 
play. A stir began in the leaves of the far-flung forests, blended with 
the murmur of the rivers and became rushing sound. Thunder 
burst, clap after clap, reverberating through the mountains. The 
air began to smell of rain, grew suddenly cool. Through the welcome 
freshness the grey troops advanced beyond Bolivar Heights; there 


330 THE LONG ROLL 


followed a long crackle of musketry and a body of blue troops re- 
treated across the river. The guns opened again; the grey can- 
non trained upon the Maryland Heights; the Maryland Heights 
answering sullenly. Down came the rain in torrents, the lightning 
flashed, the thunder rolled. The lightnings came jaggedly, bayonets 
of the storm, stabbing downward; the artillery of the skies dwarfed 
all sound below. For an hour there was desultory fighting, then it 
ceased. The grey troops awaiting orders, wondered, “‘Are n’t we 
going to cross the river after them?” ‘Oh, let it alone. Old Jack 
knows.” ; 

Toward midnight, in the midst of a great access of lightning, rain, 
and thunder, fighting was renewed. It was not for long. The guns 
fell silent again upon Loudoun Heights; moreover the long lines of 
couching infantry saw by the vivid lightning the battery horses 
come up, wet and shining in the rain. From regiment to regiment, 
under the rolling thunder, ran the order. Into column! By the left 
flank! March! 

A small stone hut on the side of a hill had formed the shelter of 
the general commanding. Here he wrote and gave to two couriers 
a message in duplicate. 

HARPER’S FERRY, 


VIRGINIA. 
May 31. Midnight. 


Hon. GEORGE W. RANDOLPH, Secretary of War: 


Under the guidance of God I have demonstrated toward the 
Potomac and drawn off McDowell, who is sending Shields by Front 
Royal. Moving now to meet him and Frémont who comes from the 
West. 

T. J. JAcKson, 
Major-General Commanding. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
THE FOOT CAVALRY 


HREE armies had for their objective Strasburg in the Valley 
of Virginia, eighteen miles below Winchester. One came from 
the northwest, under Frémont, and counted ten thousand. 

One came from the southeast, Shields’s Division from McDowell at 
Fredericksburg, and numbered fifteen thousand. These two were 
blue clad, moving under the stars and stripes. The third, grey, 
under the stars and bars, sixteen thousand muskets, led by a man on 
a sorrel nag, came from Harper’s Ferry. Frémont, Indian fighter, 
moved fast; Shields, Irish born, veteran of the Mexican War, moved 
fast; but the man in grey, on the sorrel nag, moved infantry with the 
rapidity of cavalry. Around the three converging armies rested or 
advanced other bodies of blue troops, hovering, watchful of the 
chance to strike. Saxton at Harper’s Ferry had seven thousand; 
Banks at Williamsport had seven thousand. Ord, commanding 
McDowell’s second division, was at Manassas Gap with nine thou- 
sand. King, the third division, had ten thousand, near Catlett’s 
Station. At Ashby’s Gap was Geary with two thousand; at Thor- 
oughfare, Bayard with two thousand. 

Over a hundred miles away, southeast, tree-embowered upon her 
seven hills, lay Richmond, and at her eastern gates, on the marshy 
Chickahominy were gathered one hundred and forty thousand men, 
blue clad, led by McClellan. Bronzed, soldierly, chivalrous, an able 
if over-cautious general, he waited, irresolute, and at last postponed 
his battle. He would tarry for McDowell who, obeying orders from 
Washington, had turned aside to encounter and crush a sometime 
professor of natural philosophy with a gift for travelling like a 
meteor, for confusing like a Jack-o’-lantern, and for striking the 
bull’s-eye of the moment like a silver bullet or a William Tell arrow. 
Between Richmond and the many and heavy blue lines, with their 
siege train, lay thinner lines of grey — sixty-five thousand men under 
the stars and bars. They, too, watched the turning aside of McDow- 


332 THE LONG ROLL 


ell, watched Shields, Ord, King, and Frémont from the west, trap- 
pers hot on the path of the man with the old forage cap, and the 
sabre tucked under his arm! All Virginia watched, holding her 
breath. , 

Out of Virginia, before Corinth in Tennessee, and at Cumberland 
Gap, Armies of the Ohio, of the Mississippi, of the West — one hun- 
dred and ten thousand in blue, eighty thousand in grey, Halleck and 
Beauregard — listened for news from Virginia. ‘‘Has Richmond 
fallen?” “‘No. McClellan is cautious. Lee and Johnston are be- 
tween him and the city. He will not attack until he is further 
strengthened by McDowell.’”’ “Where is McDowell?” “He was 
moving south from Fredericksburg. His outposts almost touched 
those of McClellan. But now he has been sent across the Blue Ridge 
to the Valley, there to put a period to the activities of Stonewall 
Jackson. That done, he will turn and join McClellan. The two will 
enfold Lee and Jackson —the Anaconda Scheme — and crush 
every bone in their bodies. Richmond will fall and the war end.” 

Tennessee watched and north Alabama. In Arkansas, on the 
White River were twelve thousand men in blue, and, arrayed against 
them, six thousand, white men and Indians, clad in grey. Far, far 
away, outer edges of the war, they, too, looked toward the east and 
wondered how it went in Virginia. Grey and blue, Missouri, Louisi- 
ana, New Mexico, Arizona — at lonely railway or telegraph sta- 
tions, at river landings, wherever, in the intervals between skir- 
mishes, papers might be received or messages read, soldiers in blue 
or soldiers in grey asked eagerly “ What news from Richmond?” — 
“Stonewall Jackson? Valley of Virginia?’ —“ Valley of Virginia! I 
know! — saw it once. God’s country.” 

At New Orleans, on the levees, in the hot streets, under old bal- 
conies and by walled gardens, six thousand men in blue under Butler 
watched, and a sad-eyed captive city watched. From the lower 
Mississippi, from the blue waters of the Gulf, from the long Atlantic 
swells, the ships looked to the land. All the blockading fleets, all the 
old line-of-battle ships, the screw-frigates, the corvettes, the old 
merchant steamers turned warrior, the strange new iron-clads and 
mortar boats, engaged in bottling up the Confederacy, they all 
looked for the fall of Richmond. There watched, too, the ram-fitted 
river boats, the double-enders, lurking beneath Spanish moss, rock- 


THE. FOOT CAVALRY 333 


ing beside canebrakes, on the far, sluggish, southern rivers. And the 
other ships, the navy all too small, the scattered, shattered, de- 
spairing and courageous ships that flew the stars and bars, they lis- 
tened, too, for a last great cry in the night. The blockade-runners 
listened, the Gladiators, the Ceciles, the Theodoras, the Ella Warleys 
faring at headlong peril to and fro between Nassau in the Bahamas 
and small and hidden harbours of the vast coast line, inlets of 
Georgia, Florida, Carolina. Danger flew with them always through 
the rushing brine, but with the fall of Richmond disaster might be 
trusted to swoop indeed. Then woe for all the wares below — the 
Enfield rifles, the cannon powder, the cartridges, the saltpetre, bar 
steel, nitric acid, leather, cloth, salt, medicines, surgical instru- 
ments! Their outlooks kept sharp watch for disaster, heaving in 
sight in the shape of a row of blue frigates released from patrol duty. 
Let Richmond fall, and the Confederacy, war and occupation, 
freedom, life, might be gone in a night, blown from existence by 
McClellan’s siege guns! 

Over seas the nations watched. Any day might bring a packet 
with news — Richmond fallen, fallen, fallen, the Confederacy van- 
quished, suing for peace — Richmond not fallen, some happy turn 
of affairs for the South, the Peace Party in the North prevailing, the 
Confederacy established, the olive planted between the two coun- 
tries! Anyhow, anyhow! only end the war and set the cotton 
jennies spinning! 

Most feverishly of all watched Washington on the Potomac. 
“The latest?” “It willsurely fall to-day. The thing is absurd. It is 
a little city —” “ From the Valley? Jackson has turned south from 
Harper’s Ferry. Shields and Frémont will meet at Strasburg long 
before the rebels get there. Together they ’ll make Jackson pay — 
grind the stonewall small!” 

The Army of the Valley had its orders from Strasburg the night of 
the thirtieth. The main body moved at once, back upon Winchester, 
where it gathered up stragglers, prisoners, and the train of captured 
stores. Winder with the Stonewall Brigade, left to make a final feint 
at Harper’s Ferry, was not in motion southward till much later. Of 
the main army the 21st Virginia led the column, convoying prisoners 
and the prize of stores. There were twenty-three hundred prison- 
ers, men in blue, tramping sullenly. Stonewall Jackson had made 


334 THE LONG ROLL 


requisition of all wagons about Winchester. They were now in line, 
all manner of wagons, white-covered, uncovered, stout-bodied, an- 
cient, rickety, in every condition but of fresh paint and new har- 
ness. Carts were brought, small vans of pedlars; there were stranded 
circus wagons with gold scrolls. Nor did there lack vehicles meant 
for human freight. Old family carriages, high-swung, capacious as 
the ark, were filled, not with women and children, belles and beaux, 
but with bags of powder and boxes of cartridges. Superannuated 
mail coaches carried blankets, oilcloths, sabres, shoes; light spring 
wagons held Enfield rifles; doctors’ buggies medicine cases corded in 
with care. All these added themselves to the regular supply train of 
the army; great wagons marked C. S. A. in which, God knows! there 
was room for stores. The captures of the past days filled the vacan- 
cies; welcome enough were the thirty-five thousand pounds of bacon, 
the many barrels of flour, the hardtack, sugar, canned goods, coffee, 
the tea and strange delicacies kept for the sick. More welcome was 
the capture of the ammunition. The ordnance officers beamed lov- 
ingly upon it and upon the nine thousand excellent new small arms, 
and the prisoner Parrotts. There were two hundred beautiful 
wagons marked U.S. A.; the surgeons, too, congratulated themselves 
upon new ambulances. Horses and mules that had changed masters 
might be restless at first; but they soon knew the touch of experi- 
enced hands and turned contented up the Valley. A herd of cattle 
was driven bellowing into line. 

Seven miles in length, train and convoying troops emerged from 
Winchester in the early light and began a rumbling, bellowing, sing- 
ing, jesting, determined progress up the Valley pike. Ewell fol- 
lowed with his brigadiers — Taylor, Trimble, Elzey, Scott, and the 
Maryland Line. The old Army of the Valley came next in column — 
all save the Stonewall Brigade that was yet in the rear double- 
quicking it on the road from Harper’s Ferry. As far in advance 
moved Stonewall Jackson’s screen of cavalry, the Valley horse- 
men under Ashby, a supple, quick-travelling, keen-eyed, dare-devil 
horde, an effective cloud behind which to execute intricate manceu- 
vres, a drawer-up of information like dew from every by-road, field, 
and wood, and an admirable mother of thunderbolts. Ashby and 
Ashby’s men were alike smarting from a late rebuke, administered 
in General Orders. They felt it stingingly. The Confederate soldier 


THE FOOT CAVALRY 205 


enthroned on high his personal honour, and a slur there was a slur 
indeed. Now the memory of the reprimand was a strong spur to 
endeavour. The cavalry meant to distinguish itself, and pined for a 
sight of Frémont. 

The day was showery with strong bursts of sunshine between the 
slanting summer rains. All along the great highway, in sun and 
shade, women, children, the coloured people, all the white men left 
by the drag-net of the war, were out in the ripening fields, by 
the roadside wall, before gates, in the village streets. They wept 
with pride and joy, they laughed, they embraced. They showered 
praises, blessings; they prophesied good fortune. The young women 
had made bouquets and garlands. Many a favourite officer rode 
with flowers at his saddle bow. Other women had ransacked their 
storerooms, and now offered delicate food on salvers — the lavish, 
brave, straightforward Valley women, with the men gone to the war, 
the horses gone to the war, the wagons taken for need, the crops 
like to be unreaped and the fields to be unplanted, with the clothes 
wearing out, with supplies hard to get, with the children, the old 
people, the servants, the sick, the wounded on their hands, in their 
hearts and minds! They brought food, blessings, flowers, “‘every- 
thing for the army! It has the work to do.” The colours streamed 
in the wet breeze, glorious in shadow, splendid when the sun burst 
forth. The little old bands played 

In Dixie Land whar I was born in 


Early on one frosty mornin’! 
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land! 


Long, steady, swinging tread, pace of the foot cavalry, the main 
column moved up the Valley pike, violet in the shadow, gold in the 
sun. The ten-minutes-out-of-an-hour halts were shortened to five 
minutes. During one of these rests Jackson came down the line. 
The men cheered him. “Thirty miles to-day. You must do thirty 
miles to-day, men.”” He went by, galloping forward to the immense 
and motley convoy. The men laughed, well pleased with themselves 
and with him. “Old Jack’s got to see if his lemons are all right! If 
we don’t get those lemon wagons through safe to Staunton there’ll 
be hell to pay! Go ’way! we know he won’t call it hell!” 


“The butcher had a little dog, 
And Bingo was his name. 


336 THE LONG ROLL 


B-i-n-g-o-go-! B-i-n-g-o-go! 
And Bingo was his name!”’ 


“Fall in! Oh, Lord, we just fell out!” 

Advance, convoy, main column, camped that night around and in 
Strasburg, Strasburg jubilant, welcoming, restless through the sum- 
mer night. Winder with the Stonewall Brigade bivouacked at New- 
town, twelve miles north. He had made a wonderful march. The 
men, asleep the instant they touched the earth, lay like dead. The 
rest was not long; between one and two the bugles called and the 
regiments were again in motion. A courier had come from Jackson. 
“General Winder, you will press forward.” 

Silent, with long, steady, swinging tread, the Stonewall moved up 
the Valley. Before it, pale, undulating, mysterious beneath the 
stars, ran the turnpike, the wonderful Valley road, the highway that 
had grown familiar to the army as its hand. The Army of the Val- 
ley endowed the Valley pike with personality. They spoke of it as 
“her.” They blamed her for mud and dust, for shadeless, waterless 
stretches, for a habit she was acquiring of furrows and worn places, 
for the aid which she occasionally gave to hostile armies, for the 
hills which she presented, for the difficulties of her bordering stone 
walls when troops must be deployed, for the weeds and nettles, 
thistles, and briars, with which she had a trick of decking her sides, 
for her length. “You kin march most to Kingdom Come on this 
here old road!”’ for the heat of the sun, the chill of the frost, the 
strength of the blast. In blander moods they caressed her name. 
“Wish I could see the old pike once more!” — “Ain’t any road in 
the world like the Valley pike, and never was! She never behaved 
herself like this damned out-of-corduroy-into-mud-hole, bayonet- 
narrow, drunken, zig-zag, world’s-end-and-no-to-morrow cow 
track!” 

It was not only the road. All nature had new aspects for the Con- 
federate soldier; day by day a deeper shade of personality. So much 
of him was farmer that he was no stranger to the encampment of the 
earth. He was weather-wise, knew the soil, named the trees, could 
orientate himself, had a fighting knowledge, too, of blight and drouth, 
hail, frost, high wind, flood, too little and too much of sun fire. 
Probably he had thought that he knew all that was to be told. When 
he volunteered it was not with the expectation of learning any other 


THE FOOT CAVALRY 217 


manual than that of arms. As is generally the case, he learned that 
what he expected was but a mask for what he did not expect. He 
learned other manuals, among them that of earth, air, fire, and 
water. His ideas of the four underwent modification. First of all he 
learned that they were combatants, active participants in the war- 
fare which he had thought a matter only of armies clad in blue 
and armies clad in grey. Apparently nothing was passive, nothing 
neutral. Bewilderingly, also, nothing was of a steadfast faith. Sun, 
moon, darkness and light, heat and cold, snow, rain, mud, dust, 
rt forest, hill, dale, stream, bridge, road, wall, no hay- 
rick, dew, mist, storm, everything! — they fought first on one side 
then on the other. Sometimes they did this in rapid succession, 
sometimes they seemed to fight on both sides at once; the only atti- 
tude they never took was one immaterial to the business in hand. 
Moreover they were vitally for or against the individual soldier; 
now his friend, now his foe, now flattering, caressing, bringing gifts, 
now snatching away, digging pitfalls, working wreck and ruin. They 
were stronger than he, strong and capricious beyond all reckoning. 
Sometimes he loved these powers; sometimes he cursed them. In- 
difference, only, was gone. He and they were alike sentient, active, 
conscious, inextricably mingled. 

To-night the pike was cool and hard. There were clouds above, 
but not heavy; streams of stars ran between. To either side of the 
road lay fields of wheat, of clover, of corn, banded and broken by 
shadowy forest. Massanutton loomed ahead. There was a wind 
blowing. Together with the sound of marching feet, the jingle of 
accoutrements, the striking of the horses’ hoofs against loose 
stones, the heavy noise of the guns in the rear, it filled the night like 
the roar of a distant cataract. The men marched along without 
speech; now and then a terse order, nothing more. The main army 
was before them at Strasburg; they must catch up. To the west, 
somewhat near at hand in the darkness, would be lying Frémont. 
Somewhere in the darkness to the east was Shields. Their junction 
was unmade, Stonewall Jackson and his army passing between the 
upper and the nether millstone which should have joined to crush. 

The stars began to pale, the east to redden. Faintly, faintly the 
swell and roll of the earth gathered colour. A cock crew from some 
distant farmhouse. The Stonewall swung on, the 65th leading, its 


338 THE LONG ROLL 


colonel, Richard Cleave, at its head. The regiment liked to see him 
there; it loved him well and obeyed him well, and he in his turn 
would have died for his men. Undoubtedly he was responsible for 
much of the regiment’s tone and temper. It was good stuff in the 
beginning, but something of its firm modelling was due to the man 
now riding Dundee at its head. The 65th was acquiring a reputa- 
tion, and that in a brigade whose deeds had been ringing, like a 
great bell, sonorously through the land. “The good conduct of 
the 65th —”’ “The 6sth, reliable always —” “The 65th with its 
accustomed courage —”’ “The disciplined, intelligent, and cour- 
ageous 65th —”’ “The gallantry of the 65th —”’ 

The light strengthened; pickets were reached. They belonged to 
Taylor’s Brigade, lying in the woods to either side of the pike. The 
Stonewall passed them, still figures, against the dawn. Ahead lay 
Strasburg, its church spires silver-slender in the morning air. 
Later, as the sun pushed a red rim above the hills, the brigade 
stacked arms in a fair green meadow. Between it and the town lay 
Taliaferro. Elzey and Campbell were in the fields to the east. Gen- 
eral Jackson and his staff occupied a knoll just above the road. 

The Stonewall fell to getting breakfast — big tin cups of scalding 
coffee! sugar! fresh meat! double allowance of meal! They broiled 
the meat on sharpened sticks, using the skillets for batter bread; 
they grinned at the sugar before they dropped it in, they purred over 
the coffee. Mingling with the entrancing odours was the conscious- 
ness of having marched well, fought well, deserved well. Down the 
pike, where Taylor kept the rear, burst a rattle of musketry. The 
Stonewall scrambled to its feet. ‘‘What’s that? Darn it all! the Vir- 
ginia Reel’s beginning!” An officer hurried by. ‘Sit down, boys. 
It’s just a minuet — reconnoissance of Frémont and Dick Taylor! 
It’s all right. Those Louisianians are damned good dancers!”’ 
A courier quitting the knoll above the pike gave further inform- 
ation. ‘Skirmish back there, near the Capon road. Just a feeler 
of Frémont’s—his army’s three miles over there in the woods. 
Old Dick’s with General Taylor. Don’t need your help, boys — 
thank you all the same! Frémont won’t attack in force. Old Jack 
says so — sitting up there on a hickory stump reading the Book of 
Kings!” 

“All right,” said the Stonewall. ‘We ain’t the kind to go butting 


THE FOOT CAVALRY 339 


in without an invitation! We’re as modest as we are brave. Listen! 
The blue coats are using minies.”’ 

Down the pike, during an hour of dewy morning, the Louisiana 
Brigade and Frémont’s advance fired at each other. The woods here- 
abouts were dense. At intervals the blue showed; at intervals Ewell 
dispatched a regiment which drove them back to cover. “Old Dick” 
would have loved to follow, but he was under orders. He fidgeted 
to and fro on Rifle. ‘“‘Old Jackson says I am not to go far from the 
pike! I want to go after those men. I want to chase them to the Rio 
Grande! I am sick of this fiddling about! Just listen to that, Gen- 
eral Taylor! There’s a lot of them in the woods! What’s the good 
of being a major-general if you’ve got to stick close to the pike? If 
Old Jackson were here he would say Go! Why ain’t he here? Bet 
you anything you like he’s sucking a lemon and holding morning 
prayer meeting! — Oh, here are your men back with prisoners! 
Now, you men in blue, what command’s that in the woods? Eh? — 
What?” “ Von Bayern binich nach diesem Lande gekommen.” “ Am 
Rhein habe ich gehért dass viel bezahlt wird fiir...” “Take ’em 
away! Semmes, you goand tell General Jackson all Europe’s here. — 
Mean you to go? Of course I don’t mean you to go, you thundering 
idiot! Always could pick Cesar out of the crowd. When I find him 
I obey him, I don’t send him messages. ! ! They’ve 
developed sharpshooters. Send Wheat over there, General Taylor 
— tell him to shake the pig-nuts out of those trees!”’ 

Toward mid-day the army marched. All the long afternoon it 
moved to the sound of musketry up the Valley pike. There was 
skirmishing in plenty — dashes by Frémont’s cavalry, repulsed by 
the grey, a short stampede of Munford’s troopers, driven up the 
pike and into the infantry of the rear guard, rapid recovery and a 
Roland for an Oliver. The Valley, shimmering in the June light, 
lay in anything but Sabbath calm. Farmhouse and village, mill, 
smithy, tavern, cross-roads store, held their breath — Stonewall 
Jackson coming up the pike, holding Frémont off with one hand 
while he passes Shields. 

Sunset came, a splendid flare of colour behind the Great North 
Mountain. The army halted for the night. The Louisiana Bri- 
gade still formed the rear guard. Drawn upon high ground to either 
side of the pike, it lighted no fires and rested on its arms. Next it to 





340 THE LONG ROLL 


the south lay Winder. The night was clear and dark, the pike a pale 
limestone gleam between the shadowy hills. Hour by hour there 
sounded a clattering of hoofs, squads of cavalry, reports, couriers, 
staff. There was, too, a sense of Stonewall Jackson somewhere on 
the pike, alert with grey-blue eyes piercing the dark. Toward one 
o’clock firing burst out on the north. It proved an affair of outposts. 
Later, shots rang out close at hand, Frémont having ordered a cav- 
alry reconnoissance. The grey met it with clangour and pushed it 
back. Wheat’s battalion was ordered northward and went swinging 
down the pike. The blue cavalry swarmed again, whereupon the 
Louisianians deployed, knelt first rank, fired rear rank, rose and 
went forward, knelt, fired and dispersed the swarm. From a ridge to 
the west opened a Federal gun. It had intent to rake the pike, but 
was trained too high. The shells hurtled overhead, exploding high in 
air. The cannonade ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Day began 
to break in violet and daffodil. 

As the hours went on they became fiery hot and dry. The dust 
cloud was high again over advance with great wagon train, over 
main column and rear. Water was scarce, the men horribly weary; 
all suffered. Suffering or ease, pain or pleasure, there was no resting 
this day. Frémont, using parallel roads, hung upon the right; he 
must be pushed back to the mountains as they passed up the Valley 
pike. All morning blue cavalry menaced the Stonewall; to the 
north a dense southward moving cloud proclaimed a larger force. 
Mid-day found Winder deployed on both sides of the pike, with four 
guns in position. The Louisianians sent back to know if they could 
help. ‘“No— we’ll manage.” A minute later Jackson appeared. 
Wherever matters drew suddenly to a point, there he was miracu- 
lously found. He looked at the guns and jerked his hand in the air. 
“‘General Winder, I do not wish an engagement here. Withdraw 
your brigade, sir, regiment by regiment. General Ashby is here. 
He will keep the rear.”’ 

Ashby came at the moment with a body of horse out of the wood 
to the east. He checked the black stallion, saluted and made his 
report. “I have burned the Conrad Store, White House and Co- 
lumbia bridges, sir. If Shields wishes to cross he must swim the 
Shenandoah. It is much swollen. I have left Massanutton Gap 
strongly guarded.”’ 


THE FOOT CAVALRY 341 


“Good! good! General Winder, you will follow General Taylor. 
Tell the men that I wish them to press on. General Ashby, the 
march is now to proceed undisturbed.”’ 

The second of June burned onward to its close, through heat, dust, 
thirst, and relentlessly rapid marching. In the late afternoon oc- 
curred a monstrous piling up of thunder clouds, a whistling of wind, 
and a great downpour of rain. It beat down the wheat and pattered 
like elfin bullets on the forest leaves. Through this fusillade the army 
came down to the west fork of the Shenandoah. Pioneers laid a 
bridge of wagons, and, brigade by brigade, the army crossed. High 
on the bank in the loud wind and dashing rain, Jackson on Little 
Sorrel watched the transit. By dusk all were over and the bridge 
was taken up. 

On the further shore Ashby now kept guard between Frémont and 
the host in grey. As for Shields, he was on the far side of the Massa- 
nuttons, before him a bridgeless, swollen torrent and a guarded 
mountain pass. Before becoming dangerous he must move south 
and round the Massanuttons. Far from achieving junction, space 
had widened between Shields and Frémont. The Army of the Valley 
had run the gauntlet, and in doing so had pushed the walls apart. 
The men, climbing from the Shenandoah, saluting their general, 
above them there in the wind and the rain, thought the voice with 
which he answered them unusually gentle. He almost always spoke 
to his troops gently, but to-night there was almost a fatherly tone. 
And though he jerked his hand into the air, it was meditatively 
done, a quiet salute to some observant commander up there. 

Later, in the deep darkness, the army bivouacked near New 
Market. Headquarters was established in an old mill. Herea drip- 
ping courier unwrapped from a bit of cloth several leaves of the 
whitey-brown telegraph paper of the Confederacy and gave them 
into the general’s hand. 

Next morning, at roll call, each colonel spoke to his regiment. 
“Men! There has been a great battle before Richmond —at a place 
called Seven Pines. Day before yesterday General Johnston attacked 
General McClellan. The battle raged all day with varying fortune. 
At sunset General Johnston, in the thickest of the fight, was struck 
from his horse by a shell. He is desperately wounded; the country 
prays not mortally. General Lee is now in command of the Armies 


342 -' THE -LONG:. ROLL 


of Virginia. The battle was resumed yesterday morning and lasted 
until late in the day. Each side claims the victory. Our loss is 
perhaps five thousand; we hold that the enemy’s was as great. 
General McClellan has returned to his camp upon the banks of the 
Chickahominy. Richmond is not taken. —The general command- 
ing the Army of the Valley congratulates his men upon the part 
they have played in the operations before our capital. At seven 
in the morning the chaplains of the respective regiments will hold 
divine services.” 


COAL IER xxv 
ASHBY 


LOURNOY and Munford, transferred to Ashby’s command, 
i* kept with him in the Confederate rear. The army marching 

from the Shenandoah left the cavalry behind in the wind and 
rain to burn the bridge and delay Frémont. Ashby, high on the 
eastern bank, watched the slow flames seize the timbers, fight with 
the wet, prevail and mount. The black stallion planted his fore feet, 
shook his head, snuffed the air. The wind blew out his rider’s cloak. 
In the light from the burning bridge the scarlet lining glowed and 
gleamed like the battle-flag. The stallion neighed. Ashby’s voice 
rose ringingly. “Chew, get the Blakeley ready! Wyndham’s on the 
other side!” 

The flames mounted high, a great pyre streaming up, reddening 
the night, the roaring Shenandoah, the wet and glistening woods. 
Out of the darkness to the north came Maury Stafford with a scout- 
ing party. He saluted. ‘There is a considerable force over there, 
sir, double-quicking through the woods to save the bridge. Cav- 
alry in front — Wyndham, I suppose, still bent on ‘bagging’ you.” 

“Here they are!” said Ashby. ‘But you are too late, Colonel Sir 
Percy Wyndham!”’ 

The blazing arch across the river threw a wine-red light up and 
down and showed cavalry massing beneath walnut, oak, and pine. 
There were trumpet signals and a great trampling of hoofs, but the 
roaring flames, the swollen torrent, the pattering rain, the flaws of 
wind somewhat dulled othersounds. A tall man with sash and sabre, 
thigh boots and marvellously long moustaches, sat his horse beneath 
a dripping, wind-tossed pine. He pointed to the grey troopers up and 
down the southern bank. “There’s the quarry! Fire!” 

Two could play at that game. The flash from the northern bank 
and the rattle of the carbines were met from the southern by as vivid 
a leaping spark, as loud a sound. With the New Jersey squadrons 
was a Parrott gun. It was brought up, placed and fired. The shell 


344. THE LONG ROLL 


exploded as it touched the red-lit water. There was a Versailles 
fountain costing nothing. The Blakeley answered. The grey began 
to sing. 
“If you want to have a good time — 
If you want to have a good time — 
If you want to catch the devil, 
Jine the cavalry!”’ 


A courier appeared beside Ashby. “General Jackson wants to 
know, sir, if they can cross?”’ 

“Look at the bridge and tell him, No.”’ 

“Then he says to fall back. Ammunition’s precious.” 

The cavalry leader put to his lips the fairy clarion slung from his 
shoulder and sounded the retreat. The flaming bridge lit all the place 
and showed the great black horse and him upon it. The English 
adventurer across the water had with him sharpshooters. In the 
light that wavered, leaped and died, and sprang again, these had 
striven in vain to reach that high-placed target. Now one suc- 
ceeded. 

The ball entered the black’s side. He had stood like a rock, now he 
veered like a ship in a storm. Ashby dropped the bugle, threw his 
leg over the saddle, and sprang to the earth as the great horse sank. 
Those near him came about him. “No! I am not hurt, but Black 
Conrad is. My poor friend!’”’ He stroked Black Conrad, kissed him 
between the eyes and drew his pistol. Chew fired the Blakeley 
again, drowning all lesser sound. Suddenly the supports of the 
bridge gave way. A great part of the roaring mass fell into the 
stream; the remainder, toward the southern shore, flamed higher and 
higher. The long rattle of the Federal carbines had an angry sound. 
They might have marched more swiftly after all, seeing that Stone- 
wall Jackson would not march more slowly! Build a bridge! How 
could they build a bridge over the wide stream, angry itself, hoarsely 
and violently thrusting its way under an inky, tempestuous sky! 
They had no need to spare ammunition, and so they fired recklessly, 
cannon, carbine, and revolvers into the night after the grey, re- 
tiring squadrons. 

Stafford, no great favourite with the mass of the men, but well 
liked by some, rode beside a fellow officer. This was a man genial 
and shrewd, who played the game of war as he played that of whist, 


ASHBY 345 


eyes half closed and memory holding every card. He spoke cheer- 
fully. “Shenandoah beautifully swollen! Don’t believe Frémont 
has pontoons. He’s out of the reckoning for at least a day and a 
night — probably longer. Nice for us all!” 

“Tt has been a remarkable campaign.” 

“““Remarkable’! Tell you what it’s like, Stafford. It’s like 1796 
— Napoleon’s Italian campaign.”’ 

“You think so? Well,it may betrue. Hear the wind in the pines!” 

“Tell you what you lack, Stafford. You lack interest in the war. 
You are too damned perfunctory. You take orders like an auto- 
maton, and you go execute them like an automaton. I don’t say 
that they’re not beautifully executed; they are. But the soul’s not 
there. The other day at Tom’s Brook I watched you walk your 
horse up to the muzzle of that fellow Wyndham’s guns, and, by 
God! I don’t believe you knew any more than an automaton that 
the guns were there!” 

“Yes, I did —”’ 

“Well, you may have known it with one half of your brain. You 
did n’t with the other half. To a certain extent, I can read your 
hand. You’ve got a big war of your own, in a country of your own 
— eh?” 

“Perhaps you are not altogether wrong. Such things happen 
sometimes.” 

“Yes, they do. But I think it a pity! This war” — he jerked his 
head toward the environing night — “is big enough, with horribly 
big stakes. If I were you, I’d drum the individual out of camp.” 

“Think only of the general? I wish I could!” 

“Well, can’t you?” 

“No, not yet.” 

“There are only two things — barring disease — which can so 
split the brain in two — send the biggest part off, knight-errant or 
Saracen, into some No-Man’s Country, and keep the other piece 
here in Virginia to crack invaders’ skulls! One’s love and one’s 
hate —” 

“Never both?” 

“Knight-errant and Saracen in one? That’s difficult.”’ 

“Nothing is so difficult as life, nor so strange. And, perhaps, love 
and hate are both illnesses. Sometimes I think so.” 


346 THE LONG ROLL 


‘“‘A happy recovery then! You are too good a fellow — 

“T am not a good fellow.” 

“You arenot at least an amiable one to-night! Don’t let the fever 
get too high!” 

“Will you listen,” said Stafford, “to the wind in the pines? and 
did you ever see the automatic chess-player?”’ 

Two days later, Frémont, having bridged the Shenandoah, 
crossed, and pushed his cavalry with an infantry support southward 
by the pike. About three in the afternoon of the sixth, Ashby’s 
horses were grazing in the green fields south of Harrisonburg, on 
the Port Republic road. To the west stretched a belt of woodland, 
eastward rose a low ridge clad with beech and oak. The green val- 
ley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long bil- 
lows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. 
The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others 
read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, 
short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the 
clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and 
rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrath- 
fully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four 
played poker beneath a tree, one read a Greek New Testament, six 
had found asmall turtle, and with the happy importance of boys were 
preparing a brushwood fire and the camp kettle. Others slept, head 
pillowed on arm, soft felt hat drawn over eyes. The rolling woodland 
toward Harrisonburg and Frémont was heavily picketed. A man 
rose from beside the pool, straightened himself, and holding up the 
shirt he had been washing looked at it critically. Apparently it 
passed muster, for he painstakingly stretched it upon the grass and 
taking a pair of cotton drawers turned again to the water. A blue- 
eyed Loudoun youth whistling “ Swanee River ” brought a brimming 
bucket from the stream that made the pool and poured it gleefully 
into the kettle. A Prince Edward man, lying chest downward, blew 
the fire, another lifted the turtle. The horses moved toward what 
seemed lusher grass, one of the poker players said ‘‘Damn!”’ the 
reader turned a leaf of the Greek Testament. One of the sleepers 
sat up. “I thought I heard a shot —”’ 

Perhaps he had heard one; at any rate he now heard many. Down 
the road and out from under the great trees of the forest in front 


ASHBY 347 


‘burst the pickets driven in by a sudden, well-directed onslaught of 
blue cavalry — Frémont’s advance with a brigade of infantry be- 
hind. In a moment all was haste and noise in the green vale. Men 
leaped to their feet, left their washing, left the turtle simmering in 
the pot, the gay cards upon the greensward, put up the Greek Testa- 
ment, the home letters, snatched belt and carbine, caught the 
horses, saddled them with speed, swung themselves up, and trotted 
into line, eyes front — Ashby’s men. 

The pickets had their tale to tell. ‘Burst out of the wood — the 
damned Briton again, sir, with his squadrons from New Jersey! 
Rode us down — John Ferrar killed — Gilbert captured — You 
can see from the hilltop there. They are forming for a charge. 
There’s infantry behind — Blinker’s Dutch from the looks of 
them!” 

“Blinker’s Dutch,” said the troopers. ‘‘‘Hooney,’ ‘Nix furstay,’ 
‘Bag Jackson,’ ‘Kiss und steal,’ ‘Hide under bed,’ ‘Rifle bureau 
drawers,’ ‘Take lockets und rings’ — Blinker’s Dutch! We should 
have dog whips!”’ 

To the rear was the little ridge clothed with beech and oak. The 
road wound up and over it. Ashby’s bugle sounded. “ Right face. 
Trot! March!” The road went gently up, grass on either side with 
here and there a clump of small pines. Butterflies fluttered; all was 
gay and sweet in the June sunshine. Ashby rode before on the bay 
stallion. The Horse Artillery came also from the meadow where it 
had been camped — Captain Chew, aged nineteen, and his three 
guns and his threescore men, four of them among the best gunners 
in the whole army. All mounted the ridge, halted and deployed. 
The guns were posted advantageously, the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d 
Virginia Cavalry in two ranks along the ridge. Wide-spreading 
beech boughs, growing low, small oak scrub and branchy dogwood 
made a screen of the best; they looked down, hidden, upon a gentle 
slope and the Port Republic road. Ashby’s post was in front of the 
silver bole of a great beech. With one gauntleted hand he held the 
bay stallion quiet, with the other he shaded his eyes and gazed at the 
westerly wood into which ran the road. Chew, to his right, touched 
the Blakeley lovingly. Gunner number 1 handed the powder. Num- 
ber 2 rammed it home, took the shell from Number 1 and put it in. 
Ail along the ridge the horsemen handled their carbines, spoke each 


348 THE LONG ROLL 


in a quiet, genial tone to his horse. Sound of the approaching force 
made itself heard and increased. 

“About a thousand, should n’t you think, sir?’’ asked an aide. 

“No. Between seven and eight hundred. Do you remember in 
‘Ivanhoe’ —”’ 

Out of the western wood, in order of charge, issued a body of 
horse. It was yet a little distant, horses at a trot, the declining sun 
making a stirring picture. Rapidly crescent to eye and ear, they 
came on. Their colours flew, the sound of their bugles raised the 
blood. Their pace changed to a gallop. The thundering hoofs, the 
braying trumpets, shook the air. Colours and guidons grew large. 

“By God, sir, Wyndham is coming to eat you up! This time he 
knows he’s caught the hare.”’ 

“Do all John Bulls ride like that? Shades of the Revolution! did 
we all ride like that before we came to Virginia?”’ 

“God! what a noise!”’ 

Ashby spoke. “Don’t fire till you see the whites of their 
eyes.” - 

The charge began to swallow up the gentle slope, the sunny road, 
the green grass to either hand. The bugles blew at height, the 
sabres gleamed, the tall man in front rode rising in his stirrups, his 
sabre overhead. ‘‘Huzzah! huzzah! huzzah!” shouted the blue 
cavalry. 

“Are you ready, Captain Chew?” demanded Ashby. “Very 
well, then, let them have it!” 

The Blakeley and the two Parrott guns spoke in one breath. 
While the echoes were yet thundering, burst a fierce volley from all 
the Confederate short rifles. Down went the Federal colour-bearer, 
down went other troopers in the front rank, down went the great 
gaunt horse beneath the Englishman! Those behind could not at 
once check their headlong gallop; they surged upon and over the 
fallen. The Blakeley blazed again and the grey carbines rang. The 
Englishman was on his feet, had a trooper’s horse and was shouting 
like a savage, urging the squadrons onand up. For the third time the 
woods flamed and rang. The blue lines wavered. Some horsemen 
turned. “Damn you! On!” raged Wyndham. 

Ashby put his bugle to his lips. Clear and sweet rose the notes, 
a silver tempest. “Ashby! Ashby!” shouted the grey lines and 


ASHBY 349 


charged. “Ashby! Ashby!” Out of the woods and down the hill 
they came like undyked waters. The two tides met and clashed. 
There followed a wild mélée, a shouting, an unconscious putting 
forth of great muscular energy, a seeing as through red glasses be- 
smirched with powder smoke, a poisonous odour, a sense of cot- 
ton in the mouth, a feeling as of struggle on a turret, far, far up, 
with empty space around and below. The grey prevailed, the blue 
turned and fled. For a moment it seemed as though they were 
flying through the air, falling, falling! the grey had a sense of 
dizziness as they struck spur in flank and pursued headlong. All 
seemed to be sinking through the air, then, suddenly, they felt 
ground, exhaled breath, and went thundering up the Port Republic 
road, toward Harrisonburg. In front strained the blue, presently 
reaching the wood. A gun boomed from a slope beyond. Ashby 
checked the pursuit and listened to the report of a vedette. “ Fré- 
mont pushing forward. Horse and guns and the German division. 
Hm!” He sat the bay stallion, looking about him, then, “Cuning- 
hame, you go back to General Ewell. Rear guard can’t be more 
than three miles away. Tell General Ewell about the Germans 
and ask him to give mea little infantry. Hurry now, and if he gives 
them, bring them up quickly!” 

The vedette galloped eastward. Ashby and his men rode back to 
the ridge, the Horse Artillery, the dead, the wounded, and the pris- 
oners. The latter numbered four officers and forty men. They were 
all in a group in thesunshine, which lay with softness upon the short 
grass and the little pine trees. The dead lay huddled, while over them 
flitted the butterflies. Ashby’s surgeons were busy with the wounded. 
A man with a shattered jaw was making signs, deliberately talking 
in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which perhaps he had learned for 
some friend or relative’s sake. A younger man, his hand clenched 
over a wound in the breast, said monotonously, over and over again, 
“Tam from Trenton, New Jersey, Iam from Trenton, New Jersey.” 
A third with glazing eyes made the sign of the cross, drew himself 
out of the sun, under one of the little pine trees, and died. Some 
of the prisoners were silent. Others talked with bravado to their 
captors. “Salisbury, North Carolina! That’s not far. Five hun- 
dred miles not far— Besides, Frémont will make a rescue pre- 
sently. And if he doesn’t, Shields will to-morrow! Then off you 


350 THE LONG ROLL 


fellows go to Johnson’s Island!”” The officer who had led the charge 
sat on a bank above the road. In the onset he had raged likea 
Berserker, now he sat imperturbable, ruddy and stolid, an English 
philosopher on a fallen pine. Ashby came back to the road, dis- 
mounting, and leading the bay stallion, advanced. ‘Good-day, 
Colonel Wyndham.” 

“Good-day, General Ashby. War’s a game. Somebody’s got to 
lose. Only way to stop loss is to stop war. You held the trumps— 
Damn me! You played them well, too.” His sword lay across his 
knees. He took it up and held it out. Ashby made a gesture of 
refusal. ‘No. I don’t want it. I am about to send you to the rear. 
If there is anything I can do for you —”’ 

“Thank you, general, there is nothing. Soldier of fortune. For- 
tune of war. Bad place for a charge. Ought to have been more 
wary. Served me right. You’ve got Bob Wheat with your? Know 
Bob Wheat. Find him in the rear?” 

“Ves. With General Ewell. And now as I am somewhat in 
haste —”’ . 

“You must bid me goad-day! See you are caring for my wounded. 
Much obliged. Dead will take care of themselves. Pretty little 
place! Flowers, butterflies — large bronze one on your hat. — This 
aur escort? Perfectly true you’ll have a fight presently. There’s the 
New York cavalry as well as the New Jersey — plenty of infantry — 
Pennsylvania Bucktails and so forth. Wish I could see the scrim- 
mage! Curious world! Can’t wish you good luck. Must wish you 
ill. However, good luck’s wrapped up in all kinds of curious bun- 
dles. Ready, men! General Ashby, may I present Major Mark- 
ham, Captain Bondurant, Captain Schmidt, Lieutenant Colter? 
They will wish to remember having met you. — Now, gentlemen, 
at. your service!” 

Prisoners and escort vanished over the hill. Ashby, remounting, 
proceeded to make his dispositions, beginning with the Horse Artil- 
lery which he posted on a rise of ground, behind a mask of black 
thorn and dogwood. From the east arose the strains of fife and 
drum. ‘Maryland Line,” said the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d Vir- 
ginia Cavalry. 

I hear the distant thunder hum, 
Maryland! 


ASHBY 351 


The old line bugle, fife and drum, 
Maryland! 
She breathes! She burns! she’ll come! she’ll come — 


“Oh! here’s the 58th, too! Give them a cheer, boys! Hurrah! 
58th Virginia! Hurrah! The Maryland Line!” 

The two infantry regiments came forward at a double-quick, 
bright and brisk, rifle barrels and bayonets gleaming in the now late 
sunshine, their regimental flags azure and white, and beside them 
streaming the red battle-flag with the blue cross. As they ap- 
proached there also began to show, at the edge of the forest which 
cut the western horizon, the Federal horse and foot. Before these 
was a space of rolling fields, then a ragged Iine of timber, a straggling 
copse of underbrush and tall trees cresting a wave of earth. A body 
of blue cavalry started out of the wood, across the field. At once 
Chew opened with the Blakeley and the two Parrotts. There ensued 
confusion and the horse fell back. A blue infantry regiment issued 
at a run, crossed the open and attained the cover of the coppice 
which commanded the road and the eastern stretch of fields. A 
second prepared to follow. The Maryland Line swung through the 
woods with orders to flank this movement. Ashby galloped to the 
58th. “Forward, 58th, and clear that wood!” He rode on to Mun- 
ford at the head of the squadrons. ‘I am going to dislodge them 
from that cover. The moment they leave it sound the charge!” 

The 58th advanced steadily over the open. When it was almost 
upon the coppice it fired, then fixed bayonets. The discharge had 
been aimed at the wood merely. The shadows were lengthening, the 
undergrowth was thick; they could not see their opponents. Sud- 
denly the coppice blazed, a well-directed and fatal volley. The regi- 
ment that held this wood had a good record and meant to-day to 
better it. Its target was visible enough, and close, full before it in the 
last golden light. A grey officer fell, the sword that he had brandished 
described a shining curve before it plunged into a clump of sumach. 
Five men lay upon the earth; the colour-bearer reeled, then pitched 
forward. The man behind him caught the colours. The 58th fired 
again, then, desperately, continued its advance. Smoke and flame 
burst again from the coppice. A voice of Stentor was heard. “Now 
Pennsylvania Bucktails, you’re making history! Do your durn- 
dest!” 


352 THE LONG ROLL 


“Close ranks!”’ shouted the officer of the 58th. ‘Close ranks! 
Forward!” There came a withering volley. The second colour- 
bearer sank; a third seized the standard. Another officer was down; 
there were gaps in the ranks and under feet the wounded. The regi- 
ment wavered. 

From the left came a bay stallion, devouring the earth, legs and 
head one tawny line, distended nostril and red-lit eye. The rider 
loosened from his shoulders a scarlet-lined cloak, lifted and shook it 
in the air. It flared out with the wind of his coming, like a banner, or 
a torch. He sent his voice before him, ‘‘Charge, men, charge!” 

Spasmodically the 58th started forward. The copse, all dim and 
smoky, flowered again, three hundred red points of fire. The sound 
was crushing, startling, beating at the ear drum. The Bucktails 
were shouting, ‘Come on, Johnny Reb! Go back, Johnny Reb! 
Don’t know what you want to do, do you, Johnny Reb?” 

Ashby and the bay reached the front of the regiment. There was 
disorder, wavering, from underfoot groans and cries. So wrapped in 
smoke was the scene, so dusk, with the ragged and mournful woods 
hiding the low sun, that it was hard to distinguish the wounded. It 
seemed as though it was the earth herself complaining. 

“On, on, men!” cried Ashby. “Help’s coming — the Maryland 
Line!” There was a wavering answer, half cheer, half-wailing cry, 
“Ashby! Ashby!” Two balls pierced the bay stallion. He reared, 
screamed loudly, and fell backward. Before he touched the earth 
the great horseman of the Valley was clear of him. In the smoke 
and din Ashby leaped forward, waving the red-lined cloak above his 
head. “Charge, men!” he cried. “For God’s sake, charge!” A 
bullet found his heart. He fell without a groan, his hand and arm 
wrapped in the red folds. 

From rank to rank there passed something like a sobbing cry. 
The 58th charged. Bradley Johnson with the Maryland Line dis- 
lodged the Bucktails, captured their colonel and many others, 
killed and wounded many. The coppice, from soaked mould to 
smoky treetop, hung in the twilight like a wood in Hades. It was 
full dusk when Frémont’s advance drew back, retreating sullenly 
to its camp at Harrisonburg. The stars were all out when, having 
placed the body on a litter, Ashby’s men carried Ashby to Port 
Republic. 


ASHBY 952 


He lay at midnight in a room of an old house of the place. They 
had laid him upon a narrow bed, an old, single four-poster, with — 
tester and valance. The white canopy above, the fall of the white 
below had an effect of sculptured stone. The whole looked like an 
old tomb in some dim abbey. The room was half in light, half in 
darkness. The village women had brought flowers; of these there 
was no lack. All the blossoms of June were heaped about him. He 
lay in uniform, upon the red-lined cloak, his plumed hat beside him, 
his sword in his hand. His staff watched in the room, seated with 
bowed heads beside the open window. An hour before dawn some 
one spoke to the sentry without the door, then gently turned the 
handle and entered the chamber. The watchers arose, stood at 
salute. “Kindly leave General Ashby and me alone together for a 
little while, gentlemen,” said the visitor. The officers filed out. The 
last one turning softly to close the door saw Jackson kneel. 


Chari R eV 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 


quiet that seemed unnatural. For fifteen days, north from 

Front Royal to Harper’s Ferry, south from Harper’s Ferry 
to Port Republic, cannon had thundered, musketry rattled. Battle 
here and battle there, and endless skirmishing! ‘‘One male and 
three foights a day,” said Wheat’s Irishmen. But this Saturday 
there was no fighting. The cavalry watched both flanks of the Massa- 
nuttons. The main army rested in the rich woods that covered the 
hills above the North Fork of the Shenandoah. Headquarters were in 
the village across the river, spanned by a covered bridge. Three 
miles to the northwest Ewell’s division was strongly posted near the 
hamlet of Cross Keys. From the great south peak of the Massanut- 
tons a signal party looked down upon Frémont’s road from Harri- 
sonburg, and upon the road by which Shields must emerge from the 
Luray Valley. The signal officer, looking through his glass, saw also 
a road that ran from Port Republic by Brown’s Gap over the Blue 
Ridge into Albemarle, and along this road moved a cortége — sol- 
diers with the body of Ashby. The dead general’s mother was in 
Winchester. They would have taken him there, but could not, for 
Frémont’s army was between. So, as seemed next most fit, they 
carried him across the mountains into Albemarle, to the University 
af Virginia. Up on Massanutton the signal officer’s hand shook. He 
lowered his glass and cleared his throat: “‘War’s a short word to say 
all it says —” 

Frémont rested at Harrisonburg after yesterday’s repulse. On the 
ather side of Massanutton was Shields, moving south from Luray 
under the remarkable impression that Jackson was at Rude’s Hill 
and Frémont effectively dealing with the ‘demoralized rebels.”” On 
the sixth he began fo concentrate his troops near where had been 
Columbia Bridge. On the seventh he issued instructions to his 
advance guard. 


Ts seventh of June was passed by the Army of the Valley ina 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 355 


“The enemy passed New Market on the 5th. Benker’s Division in 
pursuit. The enemy has flung away everything, and their stragglers fill 
the mountains. They need only a movement on the flank to panic-strike 
them, and break them into fragments. No man has had such a chance 
since the war commenced. You are within thirty miles of a broken, re- 
treating enemy, who still hangs together. Ten thousand Germans are on 
his rear, who hang on like bull dogs. You have only to throw yourself 
down on Waynesborough before him, and your cavalry will capture 
thousands, seize his train and abundant supplies.”’ 

In chase of this so beautiful a chance Shields set forth down the 
eastern side of Massanutton, with intent to round the mountain at 
Port Republic, turn north again, and somewhere on the Valley pike 
make that will-o’-the-wisp junction with Frémont and stamp out 
rebellion. But of late it had rained much, and the roads were muddy 
and the streams swollen. His army was split into sections; here a 
brigade and there a brigade, the advance south of Conrad’s Store, 
the rear yet at Luray. He had, however, the advantage of moving 
through leagues of forest, heavy, shaggy, dense. It was not easy to 
observe the details of his operations. 

Sunday morning dawned. A pearly mist wrapped the North 
Fork and the South Fork of the Shenandoah, and clung to the shingle 
roofs and bowery trees of the village between. The South Fork was 
shallow and could be forded. The North Fork was deep and strong 
and crossed by a covered bridge. Toward the bridge now, winding 
down from the near-by height on which the brigade had camped, 
came a detail from the 65th — twenty men led by Sergeant Mathew 
Coffin. They were chiefly Company A men, and they were going to 
relieve the pickets along the South Fork. Thanks to Mr. Commis- 
sary Banks, they had breakfasted well. The men were happy, not 
hilariously so, but in a placid, equable fashion. As they came down, 
over the wet grass, from the bluff, they talked. “Mist over the 
Shenandoah ’s just like mist over the James” — “No, ’t isn’t! 
Nothing’s like mist over the James.” — “‘ Well, the bridge’s like the 
bridge at home, anyway!” — “’T is n’t much like it. Has n’t got 
sidewalks inside.’”’ — “Yes, it has!’”— “No, it has n’t!” — “I 
know better, I’ve been through it.”— “I’ve been through it 
twice’t — was through it after Elk Run, a month ago!” — “Well, 
it has n’t got sidewalks, anyway.” — “I tell you it has.’ — “ You’re 


356 THE LONG ROLL 


mistaken!”’ — “I’m not.” — “You never did see straight nohow!” 
— “Tf I was at home I’d thrash you!”’ 

Mathew Coffin turned his head. “Who’s that jowering back 
there? Stop it! Sunday morning and all!” 

He went on, holding his head straight, a trig, slender figure, 
breathing irritation. His oval face with its little black moustache 
was set as hard as its boyish curves permitted, and his handsome 
dark eyes had two parallel lines above them. He marched as he 
marched always nowadays, witha mien aggrieved and haughty. He 
never lost the consciousness that he was wearing chevrons who 
had worn bars, and he was quite convinced that the men continu- 
ally compared his two states. 

The progress down hill to the bridge was short. Before the party 
the long, tunnel-like, weather-beaten structure loomed through the 
mist. The men entered and found it dusk and warm, smelling of 
horses, the river, fifteen feet below, showing through the cracks be- 
tween the heavy logs of the floor. The marching feet sounded hol- 
lowly, voices reverberated. “Just like our bridge — told you ’t was 
— Ain’t it like, Billy Maydew ?” 

“Tt air,” said Billy. ‘I air certainly glad that we air a-crossing on 
a bridge. The Shenandoah air a prop-o-si-tion to swim.” 

“How did you feel, Billy, when you got away?” 

“At first, just like school was out,” said Billy. ‘But when a whole 
picket post started after me, ’n’I run fer it, ’n’ the trees put out arms 
_ to stop me, ’n’ the dewberry, crawling on the ground, said to itself, 
‘Hello! Let’s make a trap’; ’n’ when the rail fences all hollered out, 
‘We’re goin’ to turn agin you!’ ’n’ when a bit of swamp hollered 
louder than any, ‘Let’s suck down Billy Maydew — suck down 
Billy Maydew!’ ’n’ when a lot 0’ bamboo vines running over cedars, 
up with ‘Hold him fast until you hear a bullet whizzing!’ ’n’I got to 
the Shenandoah and there wa’n’t no bridge, ’n’ the Shenandoah says 
‘I’d just as soon drown men as look at them!’ — when all them 
things talked so, I knew just how the critturs feel in the woods; ’n’ 
I ain’t so crazy about hunting as I was — and I say again this here 
air a most con-ve-ni-ent bridge.”’ 

With his musket butt he struck the boarded side. The noise was 
so resoundingly greater than he had expected that he laughed and 
the men with him. Now Sergeant Mathew Coffin was as nervous as 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 357 


a witch. He had been marching along with his thoughts moodily 
hovering over the battery he would take almost single-handed, or 
the ambush he would dislodge and so procure promotion indeed. At 
the noise of the stick he started violently. “‘Who did that? Oh, I 
see, and I might have known it! I’ll report you for extra duty —” 

“Report ahead,” said Billy, under his breath. 

Coffin halted. “‘What was that you said, Maydew?” 

“T did n’t speak to you — sir.”’ 

“Well, you'll speak tome now. What was it you said then?” He 
came nearer, his arm thrown up, though but in an angry gesture. 
“Tf I struck you,” thought Billy, “‘I’d be sorry for it, so I won’t do 
it. But one thing’s sure — I certainly should like to!” 

“Tf you don’t answer me,” said Coffin thickly, “I’ll report you 
for disobedience as well as for disorderly conduct! What was it you 
said then ?” 

“T said, ‘Report ahead — and be damned to you!’ ” 

Coffin’s lips shut hard. “Very good! We’ll see how three days of 
guardhouse tastes to you! — Forward!” 

The party cleared the bridge and almost immediately found itself 
in the straggling village street. The mist clung here as elsewhere, 
houses and trees dim shapes, the surrounding hills and the dense 
woods beyond the South Fork hardly seen at all. Coffin marched 
with flushed face and his brows drawn together. He was mentally 
writing a letter on pale blue paper, and in it he was enlarging upon 
ingratitude. The men sympathized with Billy and their feet sounded 
resentfully upon the stones. Billy alone marched with elaborate 
lightness, quite as though he were walking on air and loved the very 
thought of the guardhouse. 

Headquarters was an old corner house that had flung open its 
doors to General Jackson with an almost tremulous eagerness. A 
flag waved before the door, and there was a knot beneath of couriers 
and orderlies, with staff officers coming and going. Opposite was a 
store, closed of course upon Sunday, but boasting a deep porch with 
benches, to say nothing of convenient kegs and boxes. Here the vil- 
lage youth and age alike found business to detain them. The grey- 
headed exchanged remarks. “Sleep? No, I could n’t sleep! Might 
as well see what’s to be seen! I ain’t got long to see anything, and 
so I told Susan. When’s he coming out ? — Once’t when I was a 


358 THE LONG ROLL 


little shaver like Bob, sitting on the scales there, I went with my 
father in the stage-coach to Fredericksburg, I remember just as well 
— and I was sitting before the tavern on a man’s knee, — old man 
’t was, for he said he had fought the Indians, —and somebody came 
riding down the street, with two or three others. I jus’ remember a 
blue coat and a cocked hat and that his hair was powdered — and 
the man put me down and got up, and everybody else before the 
tavern got up — and somebody holloaed out ‘Hurrah for General 
Washington —’ ” 

There was a stir about the opposite door. An aide came out, 
mounted and rode off toward the bridge. An orderly brought a 
horse from the neighbouring stable. “That’s his! That’s General 
Jackson’s! — Don’t look like the war horse in Job, does he now ? — 
Looks like a doctor’s horse — Little Sorrel’s his name.” The small 
boy surged forward. ‘‘He’s coming out!’ — “How do you know 
him?” — ‘‘G’ way! You always know generals when you see them! 
Great, big men, all trimmed up with gold. Besides, I saw him last 
night.” — “ You did n’t!”” — “Yes, I did! Saw his shadow on the cur- 
tain.” —“ Howdid you know ’t was his?”” —“‘ My mother said, ‘Look, 
John, and don’t never forget. That’s Stonewall Jackson.’ And it 
was a big shadow walking up and down, and it raised its hand —” 

The church bell rang. A chaplain came out of the house. He had 
a Bible in his hand, and he beamed on all around. ‘‘There’s the first 
bell, gentlemen — the bell, children! Church in a church, just like 
before we went to fighting! Trust you’ll all come, gentlemen, and 
you, too, boys! The general hopes you'll all come.”’ 

Within headquarters, in a large bare room, Jackson was having his 
customary morning half-hour with his heads of departments — an 
invariably recurring period in his quiet and ordered existence. It 
was omitted only when he fought in the morning. He sat as usual, 
bolt upright, large feet squarely planted, large hands stiff at sides. 
On the table before him were his sabre and Bible. Before him stood 
a group of officers. The adjutant, Colonel Paxton, finished his 
report. The general nodded. “Good! good! Well, Major Harman?”’ 

The chief quartermaster saluted. ‘The trains, sir, had a good 
night. There are clover fields on either side of the Staunton road and 
the horses are eating their fill. A few have sore hoof and may have 
to be left behind. I had the ordnance moved as you ordered, nearer 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 359 


the river. An orderly came back last night from the convoy on the 
way to Staunton. Sick and wounded standing it well. Prisoners 
slow marchers, but marching. I sent this morning a string of wagons 
to Cross Keys, to General Ewell. We had a stampede last night 
among the negro teamsters. They were sitting in a ring around the 
fire, and an owl hooted or a bat flitted. They had been telling 
stories of ha’nts, and they swore they saw General Ashby galloping 
by on the white stallion.” 

“Poor, simple, ignorant creatures!’’ said Jackson. “There is no 
witch of Endor can raise that horse and rider! — Major Hawks!”’ 

The chief commissary came forward. “‘General Banks’s stores 
are holding out well, sir. We are issuing special rations to the men 
to-day — Sunday dinner — fresh beef, rice and beans, canned 
fruits, coffee, sugar —”’ 

“‘Good! good! They deserve the best. — Colonel Crutchfield —” 

“T have posted Wooding’s battery as you ordered, sir, on the 
brow of the hill commanding the bridge. There’sa gun of Courtney’s 
disabled. I have thought he might have the Parrott we captured 
day before yesterday. Ammunition has been issued as ordered. 
Caissons all filled.” 

“Good! — Captain Boswell — Ah, Mr. Hotchkiss.” 

‘Captain Boswell is examining the South Fork, sir, with a view to 
finding the best place for the foot bridge you ordered constructed. I 
have here the map you ordered me to draw.”’ 

“Good! Put it here on the table. — Now, Doctor McGuire.”’ 

“Very few reported sick this morning, sir. The good women of 
the village are caring for those. Three cases of fever, two of pneu- 
monia, some dysentery, measles among the recruits. The medicines 
we got at Winchester are invaluable; they and the better fare the 
men are getting. Best of all is the consciousness of victory, — the 
confidence and exaltation that all feel.”’ 

“Yes, doctor. God’s shield is over us. — Captain Wilbourne —’’ 

“T brought the signal party in from Peaked Mountain last night, 
sir. A Yankee cavalry company threatened to cut us off. Had we 
stayed we should have been captured. I trust, sir, that I acted 
rightly?” 

“You acted rightly. You saw nothing of General Shields ?”’ 

“Nothing, sir. It is true that the woods for miles are extremely 


360 THE LONG ROLL 


thick. It would perhaps be possible for a small force to move unseen. 
But we made out nothing.” 

Jackson rose and drew closer the sabre and the Bible. “That is 
all, gentlemen. After religious services you will return to your re- 
spective duties.” 

The sun was now above the mountain tops, the mist beginning to 
lift. It lay heavily, however, over the deep woods and the bottom 
lands of the South Fork, through which ran the Luray road, and on 
the South Fork itself. — Clatter, clatter! Shots and cries! Shouting 
the alarm as they came, splashing through the ford, stopping on the 
hither bank for one scattering volley back into the woolly veil, came 
Confederate infantry pickets and vedettes. ‘Yankee cavalry! 
Look out! Look out! Yankees!” In the mist the foremost man ran 
against the detail from the 65th. Coffin seized him. ‘‘ Where? 
where?”’ The other gasped. ‘‘Coming! Drove us in! Whole lot of 
them! Got two guns. All of Shields, I reckon, right behind!” He 
broke away, tearing with his fellows into the village. 

Sergeant Coffin and his men stared into the mist. They heard a 
great splashing, a jingling and shouting, and in another instant 
were aware of something looming like a herd of elephants. From the 
village behind them burst the braying of their own bugles — head- 
quarters summoning, baggage train on the Staunton road summon- 
ing. The sound was shrill, insistent. The shapes in the mist grew 
larger. There came a flash of rifles, pale yellow through the drift as 
of lawn. Zzzzzz! Zzzzzz! sang the balls. The twenty men of the 
65th proceeded to save themselves. Some of them tore down a side 
street, straight before the looming onrush. Others leaped fences and 
brushed through gardens, rich and dank. Others found house doors 
suddenly and quietly opening before them, houses with capacious 
dark garrets and cellars. All the dim horde, more and more of it, 
came splashing through the ford. A brazen rumbling arose, an- 
nouncing guns. The foremost of the horde, blurred of outline, pre- 
ternaturally large, huzzaing and firing, charged into the streets 
of Port Republic. 

In a twinkling the village passed from her Sunday atmosphere to 
one of a highly work-a-day Monday. The blue cavalry began to 
harry the place. The townspeople hurried home, trumpets blared, 
shots rang out, oaths, shouts of warning! Men in grey belonging 


THE BRIDGE AT’ FORT REPUBLIC 361 


with the wagon train ran headlong toward their posts, others made 
for headquarters where the flag was and Stonewall Jackson. A 
number, headed off, were captured at once. Others, indoors when 
the alarm arose, were hidden by the women. Three staff officers had 
walked, after leaving Jackson’s council, toward a house holding 
pretty daughters whom they meant to take to church. When the 
clangour broke out they had their first stupefied moment, after 
which they turned and ran with all their might toward headquar- 
ters. There was fighting up and down the street. Half a dozen huz- 
zaing and sabring troopers saw the three and shouted to others 
nearer yet. ‘“‘Officers! Cut them off, you there!” The three were 
taken. A captain, astride of a great reeking horse, towered above 
them. “Staff? You’re staff ? Is Jackson in the town? — and where? 
Quick now! Eh — what!” 

“That’s a lovely horse. Looks exactly, I imagine, like Rozi- 
nante—" 

“On the whole I should say that McClellan might be finding 
Richmond like those mirages travellers tell about. The nearer he 
gets to it the further it is away.”’ 

“Tt has occurred to me that if after the evacuation of Corinth 
Beauregard should come back to Virginia —” 

The captain in blue, hot and breathless, bewildered by the very 
success of the dash into town, kept saying, ‘‘Where is Jackson? 
What? Quick there, you! Where —”’ Behind him a corporal spoke 
out cavalierly. ‘They are n’t going to tell you, sir. There’s a large 
house down there that’s got something like a flag before. it — I 
think, too, that we ought to go take the bridge.”’ 

The streams of blue troopers flowed toward the principal street 
and united there. Some one saw the flag more plainly. “That’s a 
headquarters! — What if Jackson were there? Good Lord! what if 
we took Jackson?’ A bugler blew a vehement rally. ‘“‘ Al of you, 
come on! All of you, come on!”’ The stream increased in volume, began 
to move, a compact body, down the street. “There are horses be- 
fore that door! Look at that nag! That’s Jackson’s horse! — No.” 
— “Yes! Saw it at Kernstown! Forward!”’ 

Stonewall Jackson came out of the house with the flag before it. 
Behind him were those of his staff who had not left headquarters 
when the invasion occurred, while, holding the horses before the 


362 THE LONG ROLL 


door, waited, white-lipped, a knot of most anxious orderlies. One 
brought Little Sorrel. Jackson mounted with his usual slow deliber- 
ation, then, turning in the saddle, looked back to the shouting blue 
horsemen. They saw him and dug spurs into flanks. First he pulled 
the forage cap over his eyes and then he jerked his hand into the air. 
These gestures executed he touched Little Sorrel with the rowel and, 
his suite behind him, started off down the street toward the bridge 
over the Shenandoah. One would not have said that he went like a 
swift arrow. There was, indeed, an effect of slowness, of a man trav- 
ersing, in deep thought, a solitary plain. But for all that, he went 
so fast that the space between him and the enemy did not decrease. 
They came thunderingly on, a whole Federal charge — but he kept 
ahead. Seeing that he did so, they began to discharge carbine and 
pistol, some aiming at Little Sorrel, some at the grey figure riding 
stiffly, bolt upright and elbows out. Little Sorrel shook his head, 
snorted, and went on. Ahead loomed the bridge, a dusky, warm, 
gold-shot tunnel below an arch of weather-beaten wood. Under it 
rolled with a heavy sound the Shenandoah. Across the river, upon 
the green hilltops, had arisen a commotion. All the drums were 
beating the long roll. Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel came on 
the trodden rise of earth leading to the bridge mouth. The blue 
cavalry shouted and spurred. Their carbines cracked. The balls — 
pockmarked the wooden arch. Jackson dragged the forage cap 
lower and disappeared within the bridge. The four or five with him 
turned and drew across the gaping mouth. 

The blue cavalry came on, firing as they came. Staff and order- 
lies, the grey answered with pistols. Behind, in the bridge, sounded 
the hollow thunder of Little Sorrel’s hoofs. The sound grew fainter. 
Horse and rider were nearly across. Staff and orderlies fired once 
again, then, just as the blue were upon them, turned, dug spur, 
shouted, and disappeared beneath the arch. 

The Federal cavalry, massed before the bridge and in the field to 
either side, swore and swore, “He’s out! — Jackson’s out! There 
he goes — up the road! Fire! — Damn it all, what’s the use? He’s 
charmed. We almost got him! Good Lord! We’d all have been 
major-generals!”’ 

A patrol galloped up. ‘“‘They’ve got a great wagon train, sir, 
at the other end of the village — ordnance reserve, supply, 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 363 


everything! It is in motion. It’s trying to get off by the Staunton 
road.” 

The cavalry divided. A strong body stayed by the bridge, while 
one as large turned and galloped away. Those staying chafed with 
impatience. ‘‘ Why don’t the infantry come up — damned creeping 
snails!’? — “Yes, we could cross, but when we got to the other side, 
what then? — No, don’t dare to burn the bridge — don’t know 
what the general would say.’’ — “Listen to those drums over there! 
If Stonewall Jackson brings all those hornets down on us!” — “If 
we had a gun — Speak of the angels! — Unlimber night here, lieu- 
tenant! — Got plenty of canister? Now if the damned infantry 
would only come on! Thought it was just behind us when we 
crossed the ford — What’s that off there ?”’ 

“That” was a sharp sputter of musketry. “Firing! Who are they 
firing at? There are n’t any rebels — we took them all prisoners —”’ 

“There’s fighting, anyway — wagon escort, maybe. The devil! 
Look across the river! Look! All the hornets are coming down —”’ 

Of the detail from the 65th Coffin and two others stood their 
ground until the foremost of the herd was crossing the ford near at 
hand, large, threatening, trumpeting. Then the three ran like hares, 
hearts pounding at their sides, the ocean roaring in their ears, and 
in every cell in their bodies an accurate impression that they had 
been seen, and that the trumpeting herd meant to run down, kill or 
capture every grey soldier in Port Republic! Underfoot was wet 
knot grass, difficult and slippery; around was the shrouding mist. 
They thought the lane ran through to another street, but it proved a 
cul-de-sac. Something rose mistily before them; it turned out to be 
a cowshed. They flung themselves against the door, but the door 
was padlocked. Behind the shed, between it and a stout board 
fence, sprang a great clump of wet elder, tall and rank, with spread- 
ing leaves; underneath, black, miry earth. Into this they crowded, 
squatted on the earth, turned face toward the passage up which they 
had come, and brought their rifles to the front. A hundred yards 
away the main herd went by, gigantic in the mist. The three in the 
elder breathed deep. ‘‘All gone. Gone!— No. There’s a squad 
coming up here.” 

The three kneeling in the mire, watching through triangular 
spaces between the branchy leaves, grew suddenly, amazingly calm. 


364 THE LONG ROLL 


What was the sense in being frightened ? You could n’t get away. 
Was there anywhere to go to one might feel agitation enough, but 
there was n’t! Coffin handled his rifle with the deliberation of a wo- 
man smoothing her long hair. The man next him — Jim Watts — 
even while he settled forward on his knees and raised his musket, 
turned his head aside and spat. ‘‘Derned old fog always gits in 
my throat!” A branch of elder was cutting Billy Maydew’s line of 
vision. He broke it off with noiseless care and raised to his shoulder 
the Enfield rifle which he had acquired at Winchester. There loomed, 
at thirty feet away, colossal beasts bestridden by giants. 

Suddenly the mist thinned, lifted. The demon steeds and riders 
resolved themselves into six formidable looking Federal troopers. 
From the main street rang the Federal bugles, vehemently rallying, 
imperative. Shouting, too, broke out, savage, triumphant, pointed 
with pistol shots. The bugle called again, Rally to the colours! Rally! 

“T calculate,”’ said one of the six blue horsemen, “that the boys 
have found Stonewall.” 

“Then they’ll need us all!” swore the trooper leading. “If any- 
body’s in the cow-house they can wait.” — Right about face! For- 
ward! Trot! 

The men within the elder settled down on the wet black earth. 
“Might as well stay here, I suppose,”’ said Coffin. Jim Watts began 
to shiver. ‘It’s awful damp and cold. I’ve got an awful pain in the 
pit of my stomach.” He rolled over and lay groaning. ‘“‘Can’t I go, 
sir?” asked Billy. “TI kind of feel more natural in the open.” 

Now Mathew Coffin had just been thinking that while this elder 
bush springing from muddy earth, with a manure heap near, was 
damned uncomfortable, it was better than being outside while those 
devils were slashing and shooting. Perhaps they would ride away, 
or the army might come over the bridge, and there would be final 
salvation. He had even added a line to the letter he was writing, 
“An elder bush afforded me some slight cover from which to fire—’’ 
And now Billy Maydew wanted to go outside and be taken prisoner! 
Immediately he became angry again. ‘‘ You’re no fonder of the open 
than I am!”’ he said, and his upper lip twitched one side away from 
his white teeth. 

Billy, his legs already out of the bush, looked at him with large, 
calm grey eyes. ‘Kin I go?” 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 365 


“Go where? You’ll get killed.” 

“You would n’t grieve if I did, would you? I kinder thought I 
might get bya back street to the wagons. A cousin of mine’s a wagon 
master and he ain’t going ter give up easy. I kinder thought I might 
help —” 

“T’m just waiting,” said Coffin, “until Jim here gets over his 
spasm. Then I’ll give the word.” 

Jim groaned. “I feel sicker’n a yaller dog after a fight — ’n’ you 
know I did n’t mind ’em at all when they were really here! You 
two go on, ’n’ I’ll come after awhile.”’ 

Coffin and Billy found the back street. It lay clear, warm, sunny, 
empty. ‘‘They’re all down at the bridge,” said Billy. “Bang! bang! 
bang!”’ They came to a house, blinds all closed, shrinking behind its 
trees. Houses, like everything else, had personality in this war. A 
town occupied changed its mien according to the colour of the uni- 
form in possession. As the two hurrying grey figures approached, a 
woman, starting from the window beside which she had been kneel- 
ing, watching through a crevice, ran out of the house and through 
the yard to the gate. “You twomen, come right in here! Don’t you 
know the Yankees are in town?” 

She was young and pretty. Coffin swept off his cap. “‘That’s the 
reason we’re trying to get to the edge of town — to help the men 
with the wagon train.”’ 

Her eyes grew luminous. “How brave you are! Go, and God 
bless you!” 

The two ran on. Mathew Coffin added another line to his letter: 
‘A lady besought me to enter her house, saying that I would surely 
be killed, and that she could conceal me until the enemy was gone. 
But i—” 

They were nearly out of town — they could see the long train 
hurriedly moving on the Staunton road. There was a sudden burst 
of musketry. A voice reached them from the street below. “Halt, 
you two Confeds running there! Come on over here! Rally to the 
colours!’’? There was a flash of the stars and bars, waved vigor- 
ously. “Oh, ha, ha!” cried Billy, “thar was some of us was n’t 
taken! Are n’t you glad we didn’t stay behind the cowshed ?” 

It came into Coffin’s head that Billy might tell that his sergeant 
had wished to stay behind the cowshed. The blood rushed to his 


td 


366 THE LONG ROLL 


face; he saw the difficulty of impressing men who knew about the 
cowshed with his abilities in the way of storming batteries single- 
handed. He had really a very considerable share of physical cour- 
age, and naturally he esteemed it something larger than it was. He 
began to burn with the injustice of Billy Maydew’s thinking him 
backward in daring and so reporting him around camp-fires. As he 
ran he grew angrier and angrier, and not far from the shaken flag, 
in a little grassy hollow which hid them from view, he called upon 
the other to halt. Billy’s sense of discipline brought him to a stop, 
but did not keep him from saying, ‘What for?” They were only 
two soldiers, out of the presence of others and in a pretty tight place 
together — Mathew Coffin but three years older than he, and no 
great shakes anyhow. ‘What for?” asked Billy. 

“T just want to say to you,” said Coffin thickly, “that as to that 
shed, it was my duty to protect my men; just as it is my duty as an 
officer to report you for disobedience and bad language addressed to 
an officer —”’ 

Billy’s brow clouded. ‘‘I had forgotten all about that. I was 
going along very nicely with you. You were really behaving your- 
self — like a — like a gentleman. The cow-house was all right. You 
are brave enough when it comes to fighting. And now you’re bring- 
ing it all up again —” 

““*Gentleman.’ — Who are you to judge of a gentleman?” 

Billy looked at him calmly. ‘‘I air one of them. — IJ air a-judging 
from that-a stand.” 

“You are going to the guardhouse for disobedience and bad 
language and impertinence.” 

“Tt would be right hard,” said Billy, ‘‘if I had to leave su-pe-ri- 
or-i-ty outside with my musket. But I don’t.” 

Coffin, red in the face, made at him. The Thunder Run man, 
supple as a moccasin, swerved aside. “‘Air you finished speaking, 
sergeant? Ferif you have, ’n’ if you don’t mind, I think I’ll run along 
— | air only fighting Yankees this mornin’!”’ 

An aide of Jackson’s, cut off from headquarters and taking shelter 
in the upper part of the town, crept presently out of hiding, and find- 
ing the invaders’ eyes turned toward the bridge, proceeded with dis- 
patch and quietness to gather others from dark havens. When he 
had a score or more he proceeded to bolder operations. In the field 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 367 


and on the Staunton road all was commotion; wagons with their 
teams moving in doub!e column up the road, negro teamsters clam- 
ouring with ashen looks, “Dose damn Yanks! Knowed we did n’t 
see dat ghos’ fer nothin’ las’ night!” Wagon masters shouted, 
guards and sentries looked townward with anxious eyes. The aide 
got a flag from the quartermaster’s tent; found moreover a very few 
artillery reserves and an old cranky howitzer. With all of these he 
returned to the head of the main street, and about the moment the 
cavalry at the bridge divided, succeeded in getting his forces admir- 
ably placed in a strong defensive position: Coffin and Billy May- 
dew joined just as an outpost brought a statement that about two 
hundred Yankee cavalry were coming up the street. 

The two guns, Federal Parrott, Confederate howitzer, belching 
smoke, made in twenty minutes the head of the street all murk. In 
the first charge Coffin received a sabre cut over the head. The 
blood blinded him at first, and when he had wiped it away, and tied 
a beautiful new handkerchief from a Broadway shop about the 
wound, he found it still affected sight and hearing. He understood 
that their first musketry fire had driven the cavalry back, indeed he 
saw two or three riderless horses galloping away. He understood 
also that the Yankees had brought up a gun, and that the captain 
was answering with the superannuated howitzer. He was sure, too, 
that he himself was firing his musket with great precision. Fire /— 
load, fire! — load, fire! One, two, — one, two! but his head, he was 
equally sure, was growing larger. It was now larger than the globe 
pictured on the first page of the geography he had studied at school. 
It was the globe, and he was Atlas holding it. Fire — load, fire — 
load! Now the head was everything, and all life was within it. There 
was a handsome young man named Coffin, very brave, but misun- 
derstood by all save one. He was brave and handsome. He could 
take a tower by himself — Fire, load — Fire, load — One, two. The 
enemy knew his fame. They said, “‘ Coffin! Which is Coffin?” — 
Fire, load, one, two. The grey armies knew this young hero. They 
cheered when he went by. They cheered — they cheered — when 
he went by to take the tower. They wrote home and lovely women 
envied the loveliest woman. “Coffin! Coffin! Coffin’s going to take 
thetower! Watch him! Yaaaaih! Yaaaih!’’ —Hestruck the tower 
and looked to see it go down. Instead, with a roar, it sprang, triple 


368 THE LONG ROLL 


brass, height on height to the skies. The stars fell, and suddenly, in 
the darkness, an ocean appeared and went over him. He lay beneath 
the overturned Federal gun, and the grey rush that had silenced the 
gunners and taken the piece went on. 

For a long time he lay in a night without a star, then day began to 
break. It broke curiously, palely light for an instant, then obscured 
by thick clouds, then faint light again. Some part of his brain began 
to think. His head was not now the world; the world was lying on 
his shoulder and arm, crushing it. With one piece of his brain he 
began to appeal to people; with another piece to answer the first. 
“Mother, take this thing away! Mother, take this thing away! 
She’s dead. She can’t, however much she wants to. Father! He’s 
dead, too. Rob, Carter — Jack! Grown up and moved away. 
Judge Allen, sir!— Mr. Boyd!— would you just give a hand? 
Here I am, under Purgatory Mountain. Darling — take this thing 
away! Darling — Darling! Men!— Colonel Cleave! — Boys — 
boys —” All the brain began to think. ‘‘O God, send somebody!” 

When Purgatory Mountain was lifted from his shoulder and arm 
he fainted. Water, brought in a cap from a neighbouring puddle and 
dashed in his face, brought him to. “Thar now!”’ said Billy, “TI cer- 
tainly air glad to see that you air alive!” Coffin groaned. “It must 
ha’ hurt awful! S’pose you let me look before I move you?” He 
took out a knife and gently slit the coat away. “Sho! I know that 
hurts! But you got first to the gun! You ran like you was possessed, 
and you yelled, and you was the first to touch the gun. Thar now! 
I air a-tying the han’kerchief from your head around your arm, 
’cause there’s more blood —”’ 

“They'll have to cut it off,” moaned Coffin. 

“No, they won’t. Don’t you let ’em! Now I air a-going to lift 
you and carry you to the nearest house. All the boys have run on 
after the Yanks.” 

He took up his sergeant and moved off with an easy step. Coffin 
uttered a short and piteous moaning like a child. They presently 
met a number of grey soldiers. ‘‘We’ve druv them — we’ve druv 
them! The 37th’sdown there. Just listen to Rockbridge! — Who’ve 
you got there?” 

‘Sergeant Coffin,” said Billy. ‘He air right badly hurt! He was 
the first man at the gun. He fired, an’ then he got hold of the sponge 


THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC 369 


staff and laid about him — he was that gallant. The men ought 
to ‘lect him back. He sure did well.” 

The nearest house flung open its doors. ‘‘ Bring him right in here 
— oh, poor soldier! Right here in the best room! — Run, Maria, and 
turn down the bed. Oh, poor boy! He looks like my Robert down at 
Richmond! This way — get a little blackberry wine, Betty, and the 
scissors and my roll of lint —”’ 

Billy laid him on the bed in the best room. ‘Thar now! You air 
all right. The doctor’ll come just as soon as I can find him, ’n’ then 
I'll get back to the boys — Wait — I did n’t hear, I’ll put my ear 
down. You could n’t lose all that blood and not be awful weak —”’ 

“T’d be ashamed to report now!” whispered Coffin. “Maybe I 
was wrong —”’ 

“Sho!” said Billy. “We’re all wrong more or less. Here, darn 
you, drink your wine, and stop bothering!”’ 

Across the Shenandoah Stonewall Jackson and the 37th Virginia 
came down from the heights with the impetuosity of a torrent. Be- 
hind them poured other grey troops. On the cliff heads Poague and 
Carpenter came into position and began with grape and canister. 
The blue Parrott, full before the bridge mouth, menacing the lane 
within, answered with a shriek of shells. The 37th and Jackson 
left the road, plunged down the ragged slope of grass and vines, and 
came obliquely toward the dark tunnel. Jackson and Little Sorrel 
had slipped into their battle aspect. You would have said that every 
auburn hair of the general’s head and beard was a vital thing. His 
eyes glowed as though there were lamps behind, and his voice rose 
like a trumpet of promise and doom. “Halt! — Aim at the gunners! 
— Fire! Fix bayonets! Charge!” 

The 37th rushed in column through the bridge. The blue cavalry 
fired one volley. The unwounded among the blue artillerymen 
strove to plant a shell within the dusky lane. But most of the gun- 
ners were down, or the fuse was wrong. The grey torrent leaped 
out of the tunnel and upon the gun. They took it and turned it 
against the horsemen. The blue cavalry fled. On the bluff heads 
above the river three grey batteries came intoaction. The 37th Vir- 
ginia began to sweep the streets of Port Republic. 

The blue cavalry, leaving the guns, leaving prisoners they had 
taken and their wounded, turned alike from the upper end of the 


370 THE LONG ROLL 


village and rode, pell-mell, for the South Fork. One and all they 
splashed through, not now in covering mist, but in hot sunshine, 
the 37th volleying at their heels and from the bluffs above the Shen- 
andoah, Poague and Carpenter and Wooding strewing their path 
with grape and canister. 

A mile or two in the deep woods they met Shields’s infantry ad- 
vance. There followed a movement toward the town — futile 
enough, for as the vanguard approached, the Confederate batteries 
across the river limbered up, trotted or galloped to other positions 
on the green bluff heads, and trained the guns on the ground be- 
tween Port Republic and the head of the Federal column. Winder’s 
brigade came also and took position on the heights commanding 
Lewiston, and Taliaferro’s swung across the bridge and formed 
upon the townward side of South Fork. Shields halted. All day 
he halted, listening to the guns at Cross Keys. 

Sitting Little Sorrel at the northern end of the bridge, Stonewall 
Jackson watched Taliaferro’s men break step and cross. A staff 
officer ventured to inquire what the general thought General 
Shields would do. 

“T think, sir, that he will stay where he is.” 

CALL day, sir?’ 

Pele day, | 

“He has ten thousand men. Will he not try to attack ?” 

““No, sir! No! He cannot do it. I should tear him to pieces.” 

A heavy sound came into being. The staff officer swung round on 
his horse. ‘‘Listen, sir!” 

“Yes. Artillery firing to the northwest. Frémont will act with- 
out Shields.” 

A courier came at a gallop. “General Ewell’s compliments, sir, 
and the battle of Cross Keys is beginning.” 

“Good! good! My compliments to General Ewell, and I expect 
him to win it.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 
JUDITH AND STAFFORD 


HE cortége bearing Ashby to his grave wound up and up to 
the pass in the Blue Ridge. At the top it halted. The ambu- 
lance rested beside a grey boulder, while the cavalry escort 

dismounted and let the horses crop the sweet mountain grass. Be- 
low them, to the east, rolled Piedmont Virginia; below them to the 
west lay the great Valley whence they had come. As they rested 
they heard the cannon of Cross Keys, and with a glass made out the 
battle smoke. 

For an hour they gazed and listened, anxious and eager; then the 
horsemen remounted, the ambulance moved from the boulder, and 
all went slowly down the long loops of road. Down and down they 
wound, from the cool, blowing air of the heights into the warm June 
region of red roads, shady trees and clear streams, tall wheat and 
ripening cherries, old houses and gardens. They were moving toward 
the Virginia Central, toward Meechum’s Station. 

A courier had ridden far in advance. At Meechum’s was a little 
crowd of country people. “They’re coming! That’s an ambulance! 
—Is he in the ambulance? Everybody take off their hats. Is that 
his horse behind? Yes, it is a horse that he sometimes rode, but 
the three stallions were killed. How mournful they come! Albert 
Sidney Johnston is dead, and Old Joe may die, he is so badly hurt — 
and Bee is dead, and Ashby is dead.”” Three women got out of an old 
carryall. “One of you mencome help us lift the flowers! We were up 
at dawn and gathered all there were —” 

The train from Staunton came in — box cars and a passenger 
coach. The coffin, made at Port Republic, was lifted from the ambu- 
lance, out of a bed of fading flowers. It was wrapped in the battle- 
flag. The crowd bowed its head. An old minister lifted trembling 
hand. “God — this Thy servant! God — this Thyservant!”’ The 
three women brought their lilies, their great sprays of citron aloes. 
The coffin was placed in the aisle of the passenger coach, and four 


372 THE LONG ROLL 


officers followed as its guard. The escort was slight. Never were 
there many men spared for these duties. The dead would have been 
the first to speak against it. Every man in life was needed at the 
front. The dozen troopers stalled their horses in two of the box cars 
and themselves took possession of a third. The bell rang, slowly and 
tollingly. The train moved toward Charlottesville, and the little 
crowd of country folk was left in the June sunshine with the empty 
ambulance. In the gold afternoon, the bell slowly ringing, the train 
crept into Charlottesville. 

In this town, convenient for hospitals and stores, midway between 
Richmond and the Valley, a halting place for troops moving east and 
west, there were soldiers enough for a soldier’s escort to his resting 
place. The concourse at the station was large, and a long train fol- 
lowed the bier of the dead general out through the town to the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, and the graveyard beyond. 

There were no students now at the University. In the white- 
pillared rotunda surgeons held council and divided supplies. In the 
ranges, where were the cell-like students’ rooms, and in the white- 
pillared professors’ houses, lay the sick and wounded. From room to 
room, between the pillars, moved the nursing women. To-day the 
rotunda was cleared. Surgeons and nurses snatched one half-hour, 
and, with the families from the professors’ houses, and the men 
about the place and the servants, gathered upon the rotunda steps, 
or upon the surrounding grassy slopes, to watch the return of an old 
student. It was not long before they heard the Dead March. 

For an hour the body lay between the white columns before the 
rotunda that Jefferson had built. Soldiers and civilians, women and 
children, passing before the bier, looked upon the marble face and the 
hand that clasped the sword. Then, toward sunset, the coffin lid was 
closed, the bearers took the coffin up, the Dead March began again, 
and all moved toward the graveyard. 

Dusk gathered, soft and warm, and filled with fireflies. The 
Greenwood carriage, with the three sisters and Miss Lucy, drew 
slowly through the scented air up to the dim old house. Julius 
opened the door. The ladies stepped out, and in silence went up the 
steps. Molly had been crying. The little handkerchief which she 
dropped, and which was restored to her by Julius, was quite ‘wet. 

Julius, closing the carriage door, looked after the climbing figures: 


JUDITH AND STAFFORD LYE 


“Fo’ de Lawd, you useter could hear dem laughin’ befo’ dey got to 
de big oaks, and when dey outer de kerriage an’ went up desteps dey 
was chatterin’ lak de birds at daybreak! An’ now I heah dem sighin’ 
an’ Miss Molly’s handkerchief ez wet ez ef ’t was in de washtub! 
De ol’ times is evaporated.” 

“Dat sholy so,”’ agreed Isham, from the box. “Des look at me er- 
drivin’ horses dat once I’d er scorned to tech! — An’ all de worl’ er- 
mournin’. Graveyards gitting full an’ ginerals lyin’ daid. What de 
use of dis heah war, anyhow? W ite folk ought ter hab more sence.” 

In the Greenwood dining-room they sat at table in silence, 
scarcely touching Car’line’s supper, but in the parlour afterward 
Judith turned at bay. ‘“‘Even Aunt Lucy — of all people in the 
world! Aunt Lucy, if you do not smile this instant, I hope all the 
Greenwood shepherdesses will step from out the roses and disown 
you! And Unity, if you don’t play, sing, look cheerful, my heart will 
break! Who calls it loss this afternoon? He left a thought of him 
that will guide men on! Who doubts that to-morrow morning we 
shall hear that Cross Keys was won? Oh, I know that you are 
thinking most of General Ashby! — but I am thinking most of Cross 
Keys!” 

“Judith, Judith, you are the strongest of us all —”’ 

“Judith, darling, nothing’s going to hurt Richard! I just feel 
it Me 7 

“Hush, Molly! Judith’s not afraid.” 

“No. Iam not afraid. I think the cannon have stopped at Cross 
Keys, and that they are resting on the field. — Now, for us women. 
I do not think that we do badly now. We serve all day and half 
the night, and we keep up the general heart. I think that if in any 
old romance we read of women like the women of the South in this 
war we would say, ‘Those women were heroic.’ We have been at war 
for a year and two months. I see noend of it. It is a desert, and no 
one knows how wide it is. We may travel for years. Beside every 
marching soldier, there marches invisible a woman soldier too. We 
are in the field as they are in the field, and doing our part. No— 
we have not done at all badly, but now let us give it all! Thereisa 
plane where every fibre is heroic. Let us draw to full height, lift eyes, 
and travel boldly! We have to cross the desert, but from the 
desert one sees all the stars! Let us be too wise for such another 


374 THE LONG ROLL 


drooping hour!’’ She came and kissed her aunt, and clung to her. 
“T wasn’t scolding, Aunt Lucy! How could I? But to-night I 
simply have to be strong. I have to look at the stars, for the desert is 
full of terrible shapes. Some one said that the battle with Shields 
may be fought to-morrow. I have to look at the stars.”” She lifted 
herself. ‘‘We finished ‘ Villette,’ did n’t we? — Oh, yes! I did n’t 
like the ending. Well, let us begin ‘Mansfield Park’ — Molly, have 
you seen my knitting?” 

Having with his fellows of the escort from Port Republic seen the 
earth heaped over the dead cavalry leader, Maury Stafford lay that 
night in Charlottesville at an old friend’s house. He slept little; the 
friend heard him walking up and down in the night. By nine in the 
morning he was at the University. ‘Miss Cary? She’ll be here in 
about half an hour. If you’ll wait —”’ 

“T’ll wait,” said Stafford. He sat down beneath an elm and, with 
his eyes upon the road by which must approach the Greenwood car- 
riage, waited the half-hour. It passed; the carriage drew up and 
Judith stepped from it. Her eyes rested upon him with a quiet 
friendliness. He had been her suitor; but he was so no longer. 
Months ago he had his answer. All the agitation, the strong, con- 
trolling interest of his world must, perforce, have made him forget. 
She touched his hand. ‘I saw you yesterday afternoon. I did not 
know if you had ridden back —” 

“No. I shall be kept here until to-morrow. Will you be Sister of 
Mercy all day?” 

“T go home to-day about four o’clock.”’ 

“Tf I ride over at five may I see you?” 

“Yes, if you wish. I must go now —I am late. Is it true that we 
won the battle yesterday? Tell me —”’ 

“We do not know the details yet. It seems that only Ewell’s divi- 
sion was engaged. Trimble’s brigade suffered heavily, but it was 
largely an artillery battle. I saw a copy of General Jackson’s char- 
acteristic telegram to Richmond. ‘God gave us the victory to- 
day at Cross Keys.’ — Frémont has drawn off to Harrisonburg. 
There is a rumour of a battle to-day with Shields.”’ 

He thought that afternoon, as he passed through the road gates 
and into the drive between the oaks, that he had never seen the 
Greenwood place look so fair. The sun was low and there were 


JUDITH AND STAFFORD 375 


shadows, but where the light rays touched, all lay mellow and warm, 
golden and gay and sweet. On the porch he found Unity, sitting 
with her guitar, singing to a ragged grey youth, thin and pale, with 
big hollow eyes. She smiled and put out her hand. “Judith said 
you were coming. She will be down ina moment. Major Stafford — 
Captain Howard — Go on singing? Very well, — 


“ Soft o’er the fountain, lingering falls the southern moon — ” 


“Why is it that convalescent soldiers want the very most senti- 
mental ditties that can be sung ? 


“Far o’er the mountain, breaks the day too soon!”’ 


“T know that string is going to snap presently! Then where would 
I buy guitar strings in a land without a port ? 


“Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part — 
Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart!” 


Judith came down in a soft old muslin, pale violet, open at the 
throat. It went well with that warm column, with the clear beauty 
of her face and her dark liquid eyes. She had a scarf in her hand; it 
chanced to be the long piece of black lace that Stafford remembered 
her wearing that April night. — “It is a lovely evening. Suppose 
we walk.” 

There was a path through the flower garden, down a slope of grass, 
across a streamlet in a meadow, then gently up through an ancient 
wood, and more steeply to the top of a green hill —a hill of hills from 
which to watch the sunset. Stafford unlatched the flower-garden 
gate. ‘The roses are blooming as though there were no war!”’ said 
Judith. “Look at George the Fourth and the Seven Sisters and my 
old Giant of Battle!” 

‘‘Sometimes you are like one flower,” answered Stafford, ‘and 
sometimes like another. To-day, in that dress, you are like helio- 
trope.” 

Judith wondered. “Is it wise to go on — if he has forgotten so 
little as that ?”” She spoke aloud. “I have hardly been in the garden 
for days. Suppose we rest on the arbour steps and talk ? There is so 
much I want to know about the Valley —” 

Stafford looked pleadingly. “‘ No, no! let us go the old path and see 


376 THE LONG ROLL 


the sunset over Greenwood. Always when I ride from here I say to 
myself, ‘I may never see this place again!’ ”’ 

They walked on between the box. “The box has not been clipped 
this year. I do not know why, except that all things go unpruned. 
The garden itself may go back to wilderness.”’ 

“Vou have noticed that? It is always so in times like these. We 
leave the artificial. Things have a hardier growth — feeling breaks 
its banks — custom is not listened to — 

“Tt is not so bad as that!” said Judith, smiling. “And we will not 
really let the box grow out of all proportion! — Now tell me of the 
Valley.” 

They left the garden and dipped into the green meadow. Stafford 
talked of battles and marches, but he spoke in a monotone, distrait 
and careless, as of a day-dreaming scholar reciting his lesson. Such 
as it was, the recital lasted across the meadow, into the wood, yet 
lit by yellow light, a place itself for day dreams. ‘‘No. I did not see 
him fall. He was leading an infantry regiment. He was happy in 
his death, I think. One whom the gods loved. — Wait! your scarf 
has caught.” 

He loosed it from the branch. She lifted the lace, put it over her 
head, and held it with her slender hand beneath her chin. He looked 
at her, and his breath came sharply. A shaft of light, deeply gold, 
struck across the woodland path. He stood within it, on slightly 
rising ground that lifted him above her. The quality of the light 
gave him a singular aspect. He looked a visitant from another 
world, a worn spirit, of fine temper, but somewhat haggard, some- 
what stained. Lines came into Judith’s brow. She stepped more 
quickly, and they passed from out the wood to a bare hillside, grass 
and field flowers to the summit. The little path that zigzagged up- 
ward was not wide enough for two. He moved through the grass and 
flowers beside her, a little higher still, and between her and the sun. 
His figure was dark; no longer lighted as it was in the wood. Judith 
sighed inwardly. ‘I am so tired that I am fanciful. I should not 
have come.” She talked on. “When we were children and read 
‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ Unity and I named this the Hil! Difficulty. And 
we named the Blue Ridge the Delectable Mountains — War puts a 
stop to reading.” 


“Yes. The Hill Difficulty! On the other side was the Valley of 
Humiliation, was it not ?” 


JUDITH AND STAFFORD 377 


“Ves: where Christian met Apollyon. We are nearly up, and the 
sunset will be beautiful.” 

At the top, around a solitary tree, had been built a bench. The 
two sat down. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge. Above 
the mountains sailed a fleet of little clouds, in a sea of pale gold shut 
in by purple headlands. Here and there on the earth the yellow 
light lingered. Judith sat with her head thrown back against the 
bark of the tree, her eyes upon the long purple coast and the golden 
sea. Stafford, his sword drawn forward, rested his clasped hands 
upon the hilt and his cheek on his hands. “Are they not like the 
Delectable Mountains?” she said. “Almost you can see the shep- 
herds and the flocks — hear the pilgrims singing. Look where that 
shaft of light is striking!”’ 

“There is heliotrope all around me,” he answered. ‘‘I see nothing, 
know nothing but that!” 

“You do very wrongly,” she said. “You pain me and you anger 
me!” 

“Judith! Judith! I cannot help it. If the wildest tempest were 
blowing about this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and 
strive to cling to the bough, to remain with its larger self — yet 
would it be twisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My 
passion is that tempest and my soul is that leaf.”’ 

“Tt is more than a year since first I told you that I could not 
return your feeling. Last October — that day we rode to the old 
mill — I told you so again, and told you that if we were to remain 
friends it could only be on condition that you accepted the truth as 
truth and let the storm you speak of die! You promised —” 

“Even pale friendship, Judith — I wanted that!” 

“Tf you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October I 
thought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, won- 
derful letters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood —”’ 

“T could hear from you only on those terms. I kept them until 
they, too, were of no use —”’ 

“When I wrote to you last month —” 

“T knew of your happiness — before you wrote. I learned it from 
one nearly concerned. I— I —” He put his hand to his throat as 
if he were choking, arose, and walked a few paces and came back. 
“Tt was over there near Gordonsville — under a sunset sky much 


378 THE LONG ROLL 


like this. What did I do that night? I have a memory of all the 
hours of blackness that men have ever passed, lying under forest 
trees with their faces against the earth. You see me standing here, 
but I tell you my face is against the earth, at your feet —”’ 

“Tt is madness!” said Judith. “ You see not me, but a goddess of 
your own making. It is a chain of the imagination. Break it! True 
goddesses do not wish such love — at least, true women do not!”’ 

“T cannot break it. It is too strong. Sometimes I wish to break 
it, sometimes not.” 

Judith rose. ‘Let us go. The sun is down.” 

She took the narrow path and he walked beside and above her as 
before. Darker crimson had come into the west, but the earth be- 
neath had yet a glow and warmth. They took a path which led, not 
by way of the wood, but by the old Greenwood graveyard, the bury- 
ing-place of the Carys. At the foot of the lone tree hill they came 
again side by side, and so mounted the next low rise of ground. 
“Forgive me,” said Stafford. “I have angered you. I am very 
wretched. Forgive me.” ; 

They were beside the low graveyard wall. She turned, leaning 
against it. There were tears in her eyes. ‘‘ You all come, and you 
go away, and the next day brings news that such and such an one is 
dead! With the sound of Death’s wings always in the air, how can 
any one — I do not wish to be angry. If you choose we will talk like 
friends — like a man and a woman of the South. If you donot, I can 
but shut my ears and hasten home and henceforth be too wise to 
give you opportunity —”’ 

“T go back to the front to-morrow. Be patient with me these few 
minutes. And I, Judith —I will cling with all my might to the 
tree —” 

A touch like sunlight came upon him of his old fine grace, charm- 
ing, light, andstrong. ‘‘I won’t let go! How lovely it is, and still — 
the elm tops dreaming! And beyond that gold sky and the moun- 
tains all the fighting! Let us go through the graveyard. It is so still 
— and all their troubles are over.” 

Within the graveyard, too, was an old bench around an elm. “A 
few minutes only!” pleaded Stafford. ‘‘ Presently I must ride back 
to town — and in the morning I return to the Valley.” They sat 
down. Before them was a flat tombstone sunk in ivy, a white rose at 


JUDITH AND STAFFORD 379 


the head. Stafford, leaning forward, drew aside with the point of his 
scabbard the dark sprays that mantled the graved coat of arms. 


LUDWELL CARY 
In part I sleep. I wake within the whole. 


He let the ivy swing back. ‘“‘I have seen many die this year who 
wished to live. If death were forgetfulness! I do not believe it. I 
shall persist, and still feel the blowing wind —”’ 

“Listen to the cow-bells!” said Judith. “‘ There shows the evening 
star.” 

“Can a woman know what love is? This envelope of the soul — 
If I could but tear it! Judith, Judith! Power and longing grow in 
the very air I breathe! — will to move the universe if thereby I might 
gain you! — your presence always with me in waves of light and 
sound! and youcannot truly see nor hear me! Could you do so, deep 
would surely answer deep!”’ 

“Do you not know,” she said clearly, “that I love Richard 
Cleave? You do not attract me. You repel me. There are many 
souls and many deeps, and the ocean to which I answer knows not 
your quarter of the universe!” 

“Do you love him so? I will work him harm if I can!” 

She rose. “I have been patient long enough. — No! not with me, 
if you please! I will go alone. Let me pass, Major Stafford! —” 

She was gone, over the dark trailing periwinkle, through the 
little gate canopied with honeysuckle. For a minute he stayed be- 
neath the elms, calling himself fool and treble fool; then he followed, 
though at a little distance. She went before him, in her pale violet, 
through the gathering dusk, unlatched for herself the garden gate 
and passed into the shadow of the box. A few moments later he, too, 
entered the scented alley and saw her waiting for him at the gate 
that gave upon the lawn. He joined her, and they moved without 
speaking to the house. 

They found the family gathered on the porch, an old horse waiting 
on the gravel below, and an elderly, plain man, a neighbouring farmer, 
standing halfway up the steps. He was speaking excitedly. Molly 
beckoned from above. “Oh, Judith, it’s news of the battle —” 

“Yes’m,” said the farmer. ‘Straight from Staunton — telegram 


380 THE LONG ROLL 


to the colonel in Charlottesville. ‘Big fighting at Port Republic. 
Jackson whipped Shields. Stonewall Brigade suffered heavily.’ — 
No’m — That was all. We won’t hear details till to-morrow. — 
My boy John’s in the Stonewall, you know — but Lord! John 
always was a keerful fellow! I reckon he’s safe enough — but I ain’t 
going to tell his mother about the battle till to-morrow; she might 
as well have her sleep. — War’s pernicious hard on mothers. I 
teckon we'll see the bulletin to-morrow.” 

He was gone, riding in a sturdy, elderly fashion toward his home 
in a cleft of the hills. ‘‘ Major Stafford cannot stay to supper, Aunt 
Lucy,” said Judith clearly. “Is that Julius in the hall? Tell one 
‘of the boys to bring Major Stafford’s horse around.” 

As she spoke she turned and went into the house. The group upon 
the porch heard her step upon the polished stair. Unity proceeded 
to make conversation. A negro brought the horse around. Judith 
‘did not return. Stafford, still and handsome, courteous and self- 
possessed, left farewell for her, said good-bye to the other Green- 
‘wood ladies, mounted and rode away. Unity, sitting watching him 
-unlatch the lower gate and pass out upon the road, hummed a line — 


“ Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part!” 


“‘T have a curious feeling about that man,” said Miss Lucy, “and 
yet it is the rarest thing that I distrust anybody! — What is it, 
Molly?” 

“Tt’s no use saying that I romance,” said Molly, “for I don’t. 
And when Mr. Hodge said ‘the Stonewall Brigade suffered heavily’ 
he looked glad —”’ 

“Who looked glad ?”’ 

“Major Stafford. It’s no use looking incredulous, for he did! 
There was the most curious light came into his face. And Judith 
saw it 

“Molly — Molly —” 

“She did! You know how Edward looks when he’s white-hot 
angry — still and Greek looking? Well, Judith looked like that. 
And she and Major Stafford crossed looks, and it was like crossed 
swords. And then she sent for his horse and went away, upstairs to 
her room. She’s up there now praying for the Stonewall Brigade 
.and for Richard.” 


JULIE AND STAPFORD 381 


“Molly, you’re uncanny!” said Unity. “Oh me ! Love and Hate 
— North and South — and we’ll not have the bulletin until to- 
morrow —”’ 

Miss Lucy rose. ‘‘I am going upstairs to Judith and tell her that I 
simply know Richard is safe. There are too many broken love 
stories in the world, and the Carys have had more than their 
share.” 


XXVITI 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 


fought four pitched battles and a whole rosary of skirmishes, 
made of naught the operations of four armies, threatened its 

enemy’s capital and relieved its own, the Army of the Valley wound 
upward toward the Blue Ridge from the field of Port Republic. It 
had attended Shields some distance down the Luray road. “ Drive 
them! — drive them!” had said Jackson. It had driven them then, 
turning on its steps it had passed again the battlefield. Frémont’s 
army, darkening the heights upon the further side of that river of 
burned bridges, looked impotently on. Frémont shelled the meadow 
and the wheat fields over which ambulances and surgeons were yet 
moving, on which yet lay his own wounded, but his shells could not 
reach the marching foe. Brigade after brigade, van, main and rear, 
cavalry, infantry, artillery, quartermaster, commissary and ord- 
nance trains, all disappeared in the climbing forest. A cold and 
chilling rain came on; night fell, and a drifting mist hid the Army 
of the Valley. The next morning Frémont withdrew down the Val- 
ley toward Strasburg. Shields tarried at Luray, and the order from 
Washington directing McDowell to make at once his long delayed 
junction with McClellan upon the Chickahominy was rescinded. 

The rear guard of the Army of the Valley buried the dead of Port 
Republic in trenches, and then it, too, vanished. To the last wagon 
wheel, to the last poor straggler, all was gone. It was an idiosyn- 
crasy of Jackson’s to gather and take with him every filing. He 
travelled like a magnet; all that belonged to him went with him. 
Long after dark, high on the mountain-side, an aide appeared in the 
rain, facing the head of the rear brigade. 

“The general says have you brought off every inch of the cap- 
tured guns?” 

“Tell him all but one unserviceable caisson. We did not’ have 
horses for that.” 


H AVING, ina month and ten days, marched four hundred miles, 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 383 


The aide galloped forward, reported, turned, and galloped back. 
“General Jackson says, sir, that if it takes every horse in your com- 
mand, that caisson is to be brought up before daylight.” 

The other swore. “ All those miles — dark and raining! — Lieuten- 
ant Parke! — Something told me I’d better do it in the first place! ”’ 

Brigade after brigade the Army of the Valley climbed the Blue 
Ridge. At first the rain had been welcome, so weary and heated were 
the men. But it never took long for the novelty of rain to wear off. 
Wet and silent the troops climbed through the darkness. They had 
won a victory; they were going to win others. Old Jack was as great 
a general as Napoleon, and two or three hours ago it had seemed 
possible to his soldiers that history might rank them with the Old 
Guard. But the rain was chill and the night mournfully dark. When 
had they eaten? They hardly remembered, and it was an effort to 
lift one leg after the other. Numbers of men were dropping with 
sleep. All shivered; all felt the reaction. Back on the plain by the 
river lay in trenches some hundreds of their comrades. In the rear 
toiled upwards ambulances filled with wounded. There were not 
ambulances enough; the wounded rode wherever there was room 
in any wagon. The less badly hurt sat or lay, dully suffering, on 
caissons. All as they toiled upward had visions of the field behind 
them. It had not been a great battlefield, as to extent and num- 
bers engaged, but a horrible one. The height where the six guns had 
been, the gun which the Louisianians took — the old charcoal kiln 
where the guns had been planted, the ground around, the side of the 
ravine — these made an ugly sight between eyelid and ball! So 
many dead horses! — eighty of them in one place — one standing 
upright where he had reared and, dying, had been caught and 
propped by a blasted pine. So many dead men, grey and blue, lying 
as in pattern! And then the plain beneath, and the Stonewall’s des- 
perate fight, and the battle in the wheat! The Federal cannon had 
sheared the heads from the men. The soldiers, mounting through the 
darkness in the whistling wind and rain, saw again these headless 
bodies. One only, the body of a young soldier of the 2d Vir- 
ginia, a brother of the colonel of the 65th, the army was carrying 
with it. The brother, wounded himself, had begged the body. At 
the first village where the army halted, he would get a coffin and lay 
the boy in a grave he could mark. His mother and sister could visit 


384 THE LONG ROLL 


it then. Permission was given. It lay now in an ambulance, covered 
with a flag. Cleave lay upon the straw beside it, his arm flung across 
the breast. At its feet sat a dark and mournful figure, old Tullius 
with his chin propped on his knees. 

The rain came down, fine as needles’ points and cold. Somewhere 
far below a mountain stream was rushing, and in the darkness the 
wind was sighing. Theroad wound higher. The lead horses, drawing 
a gun, stepped too near the edge of the road. The wet earth gave 
way. The unfortunate brutes plunged, struggled, went down and 
over the embankment, dragging the wheel horses after them. Gun, 
carriage, and caisson followed. The echoes awoke dismally. The 
infantry, climbing above, looked down the far wooded slopes, but 
incuriously. The infantry was tired, cold, and famished; it was not 
interested in artillery accidents. Perhaps at times the Old Guard 
had felt thus, with a sick and cold depression, kibed spirits as well as 
heels, empty of enthusiasm as of food, resolution lost somewhere in 
the darkness, sonority gone even from “l’empereur”’ and “ la France.” 
Slowly, amid drizzling rain, brigade after brigade made Brown’s Gap 
and bivouacked within the dripping forest. 

Morning brought a change. The rain yet fell, but the army was 
recovering from the battlefield. It took not long, nowadays, to 
recover. The army was learning to let the past drop into the abyss 
and not to listen for the echoes. It seemed a long time that the 
country had been at war, and each day’s events drove across and hid 
the event of the day before. Speculation as to the morrow remained, 
but even this hung loosely upon the Army of the Valley. Wonder- 
ment as to the next move partook less of deep anxiety than of the 
tantalization of guessing at a riddle with the answer always just 
eluding you. The army guessed and guessed — bothering with the 
riddle made its chief occupation while it rested for two days and 
nights, beside smoky camp-fires, in a cold June rain, in the cramped 
area of Brown’s Gap; but so assured was it that Old Jack knew the 
proper answer, and would give it in his own good time, that the guess- 
ing had little fretfulness or edge of temper. By now, officers and 
men, the confidence was implicit. “Tell General Jackson that we 
will go wherever he wishes us to go, and do whatever he wishes us 
to do.” 

On the morning of the twelfth “at early dawn”’ the army found 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 385 


itself again in column. The rain had ceased, the clouds were gone, 
presently up rose the sun. The army turned its back upon the sun; 
the army went down the western side of the mountains, down again 
into the great Valley. The men who had guessed “ Richmond” 
were crestfallen. They who had stoutly held that Old Jack had 
mounted to this eyrie merely the better again to swoop down upon 
Frémont, Shields, or Banks crowed triumphantly. “ Knew it Tues- 
day, when the ambulances obliqued at the top and went on down. 
toward Staunton! He sends his wounded in front, he never leaves 
them behind! Knew it was n’t Richmond!” 

Brigade by brigade the army wound down the mountain, passed 
below Port Republic, and came into a lovely verdurous country, soft 
green grass and stately trees set well apart. Here it rested five days, 
and here the commanding general received letters from Lee. 

“Your recent successes have been the cause of the liveliest joy in this 
army as well as in the country. The admiration excited by your skill 
and boldness has been constantly mingled with solicitude for your situa- 
tion. The practicability of reinforcing you has been the subject of the 
gravest consideration. It has been determined to do so at the expense of 
weakening this army. Brigadter-General Lawton with six regiments from. 
Georgia is on his way to you, and Brigadier-General Whiting with eight 
veteran regiments leaves here to-day. The object is to enable you to crush 
the forces opposed to you. Leave your enfeebled troops to watch the coun- 
try and guard the passes covered by your artillery and cavalry, and with 
your matin body, including Ewell’s Division and Lawton’s and W hit- 
ing’s commands, move rapidly to Ashland, by rail or otherwise as you 
jind most advantageous, and sweep down between the Chickahominy and 
the Pamunkey, cutting up the enemy’s communications, etc., while this 
army attacks McCleiian in front. He will then, I think, be forced to 
come out of his entrenchments where he is strongly posted on the Chicka- 
hominy, and apparently preparing to move by gradual approaches on 
Richmond.” 

And of a slightly earlier date. 

Should there be nothing requiring your attention in the Valley, so 
as to prevent your leaving it in a few days, and you can make arrange- 
ments to deceive the enemy and impress him with the idea of your pre- 
sence, please let me know, that you may unite at the decisive moment 
with the army near Richmond.” 


386 THE LONG ROLL 


It may be safely assumed that these directions could have been 
given to no man more scrupulously truthful in the least of his per- 
sonal relations, and to no commander in war more gifted in all that 
pertains to “deceiving the enemy and impressing him with an idea 
of your presence.”’ Infantry and artillery, the Army of the Valley 
rested at Mt. Meridian under noble trees. The cavalry moved to 
Harrisonburg. Munford had succeeded Ashby in command, and 
Munford came to take his orders from his general. He found him 
with the dictionary, the Bible, the Maxims, and a lemon. 

“You will draw a cordon quite across, north of Harrisonburg. 
See, from here to here.’”’? He drew a map toward him and touched 
two points with a strong, brown finger. 

“Very well, sir.” 

“You will arrest all travellers up and down the Valley. None is to 
pass, going north or going south.” 

“Very well, sir.” 

“TI wish the cavalry outposts to have no communication with the 
infantry. If they know nothing of the latter’s movements they can- 
not accidentally transmit information. You will give this order, and 
you will be held accountable for its non-obedience.”’ 

“Very well, sir.” 

“You will proceed to act with boldness masking caution. Press 
the outposts of the enemy and, if possible, drive him still further 
northward.” He broke off and sucked the lemon. 

“Very well, sir.” 

“Create in him the impression that you are strongly supported. 
Drive it into his mind that I am about to advance against him. 
General Lee is sending reinforcements from Richmond. I do not 
object to his knowing this, nor to his having an exaggerated idea of 
their number. You will regard these instructions as important.” 

“‘T will do my best, sir.” 

“Good, good! That is all, colonel.’ 

Munford returned to Harrisonburg, drew his cordon across the 
Valley, and pushed his outposts twelve miles to the northward. Here 
they encountered a Federal flag of truce, an officer with several sur- _ 
geons, and a demand from Frémont for the release of his wounded 
men. The outposts passed the embassy on to Munford’s head- 
quarters at Harrisonburg. That cavalryman stated that he would 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 387 


take pleasure in forwarding General Frémont’s demand to General 
Jackson. ‘‘Far? Oh, no! it is not far.” In the mean time it was 
hoped that the Federal officers would find such and such a room 
comfortable lodging. They found it so, discovered, too, that it was 
next to Munford’s own quarters, and that the wall between was thin 
— nothing more, indeed, than a slight partition. An hour or two 
later the Federal officers, sitting quietly, heard the Confederate 
cavalryman enter, ask for writing materials, demand of an aide if the 
courier had yet returned from General Jackson, place himself at a 
table and fall to writing. One of the bluesoldiers tiptoed to the wall, 
found a chair conveniently placed and sat down with his ear to the 
boards. For five minutes, scratch, scratch! went Munford’s pen. 
At the expiration of this time there was heard in the hall without a 
jingling of spurs anda clanking of asabre. The scratching ceased; the 
pen was evidently suspended. “Come in!” The listeners in the next 
room heard more jingling, a heavy entrance, Munford’s voice again. 

“Very good, Gilmer. What did the general say ?”’ 

“He says, sir, that General Frémont is to be told that our sur- 
geons will continue to attend their wounded. As we are not mon- 
sters they will be as carefully attended to as are our own. The only 
lack in the matter will be medicines and anesthetics.” 

“Very good, Gilmer, I will so report to the officer in charge of the 
flag of truce. — Well, what isit, man ? You look as though you were 
bursting with news!” 

“Tam, sir! Whiting,and Hood, and Lawton, and the Lord knows 
who besides, are coming over the Rockfish Gap! I saw them with my 
own eyes on the Staunton road. About fifteen thousand, I reckon, of 
Lee’s best. Gorgeous batteries — gorgeous troops — Hood’s Texans 
— thousands of Georgians — all of them playing ‘ Dixie,’ and hur- 
rahing, and asking everybody they see to point out Jackson! — No, 
sir, I’m not dreaming! I know we thought that they could n’t get 
here for several days yet — but here they are! Good Lord! I 
would n’t, for a pretty, miss the hunting down the Valley!”’ 

The blue soldiers heard Munford and the courier go out. An hour 
later they were conducted to the colonel’s presence. “I am sorry, 
major, but General Jackson declines acceding to General Frémont’s 
request. He says —” 

The party with the flag of truce went back to Frémont. They 


388 THE LONG ROLL 


went like Lieutenant Gilmer,“ bursting with news.” The next day 
Munford pushed his advance to New Market. Frémont promptly 
broke up his camp, retired to Strasburg, and began to throw up forti- 
fications. His spies brought bewilderingly conflicting reports. A 
deserter, who a little later deserted back again, confided to him that 
Stonewall Jackson was simply another Cromwell; that he was mak- 
ing his soldiers into Ironsides: that they were Presbyterian to a man, 
and believed that God Almighty had planned this campaign and. 
sent Jackson to executeit; that he — the deserter — being of cava- 
lier descent, could n’t stand it and “got out.’”’ There was an affair 
of outposts, in which several prisoners were taken. These acknow- 
ledged that a very large force of cavalry occupied Harrisonburg, and 
that Jackson was close behind, having rebuilt the bridge at Fort 
Republic across the Shenandoah, and advanced by the Keezletown 
road. An old negro shambled one morning into the lines. “ Yaas, 
sah, dat’s de truf! I ain’ moughty unlike ol’ Brer Eel. I cert’ny 
slipped t’roo dat ’cordion Gineral Jackson am er stretchin’! How 
many on de oder side, sah? ’Bout er half er million.”’ Frémont tele- 
graphed and wrote to Washington. “The condition of affairs here 
imperatively requires that some position be immediately made 
strong enough to be maintained. Reinforcements should be sent 
here without an hour’s delay. Whether from Richmond or else- 
where, forces of the enemy are certainly coming into this region. 
Casualties have reduced my force. The small corps scattered 
about the country are exposed to sudden attack by greatly superior 
force of an enemy to whom intimate knowledge of country and uni- 
versal friendship of inhabitants give the advantage of rapidity and 
secrecy of movements. I respectfully submit this representation to 
the President, taking it for granted that it is the duty of his generals 
to offer for his consideration such impressions as are made by know- 
ledge gained in operations on the ground.” 

South of the impenetrable grey curtain stretched across the Val- 
ley began a curious series of moves. A number of Federal prisoners 
on their way from Port Republic to Richmond, saw pass them three 
veteran brigades. The guards were good-naturedly communica- 
tive. “Who are those? Those are Whiting and Hood and Law- 
ton on their way to reinforce Stonewall. If we didn’t have to 
leave this railroad you might see Longstreet’s Division — it’s just 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 389 


behind. How can Lee spare it? — Oh, Beauregard ’s up from the 
South to take its place!” The prisoners arrived in Richmond. To 
their surprise and gratification the officers found themselves paroled, 
and that at once. They had a glimpse of an imposing review; they 
passed, under escort, lines of entrenchments, batteries, and troops; 
their passage northward to McDowell’s lines at Fredericksburg 
was facilitated. In a remarkably short space of time they were in 
Washington, insisting that Longstreet had gone to the Valley, and 
that Beauregard was up from the South — they had an impression 
that in that glimpse of a big review they had seen him! Certainly 
they had seen somebody who looked as though his name ought to 
be Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard! 

In the mean time Hood, Lawton, and Whiting actually arrived in 
the Valley. They came into Staunton, in good order, veteran 
troops, ready to march against Shields or Frémont or Banks or 
Sigel, to keep the Valley or to proceed against Washington, quite as 
Stonewall Jackson should desire! Seven thousand troops, Georgia, 
Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia, lean, bronzed, growing ragged, 
tall men, with eyes set well apart, good marchers, good fighters, good 
lovers, and good haters. — There suddenly appeared before them on 
the pike at Staunton Stonewall Jackson, ridden through the night 
from Mt. Meridian. 

The three brigades paraded. Jackson rode up and down the line. 
His fame had mounted high. To do with a few men and at a little 
cost what, by all the rules of war, should have involved strong 
armies and much bloodshed — that took a generalship for which the 
world was beginning to give him credit. With Cross Keys and Port 
Republic began that sustained enthusiasm which accompanied him 
to the end. Now, on the march and on the battlefield, when he 
passed his men cheered him wildly, and throughout the South the 
eyes of men and women kindled at his name. At Staunton the re- 
inforcing troops, the greater number of whom saw him for the first 
time, shouted for him and woke the echoes. Grave and unsmiling, 
he lifted the forage cap, touched Little Sorrel with the spur and 
went on by. It is not to be doubted that he was ambitious, and it 
lies not in ambitious man, no, nor in man of any type, to feel no joy 
in such a cry of recognition! If he felt it, however, he did not 
evince it. He only jerked his hand into the air and went by. 


390 THE LONG ROLL 


Two hours later he rode back to Mt. Meridian. The three brigades 
under orders to follow, stayed only to cook a day’s rations and to 
repack their wagons. Their certainty was absolute. ‘We will join 
the Army of the Valley wherever it may be. Then we will march 
against Shields or Frémont, or maybe against Banks or Sigel.” 

Breaking camp in the afternoon, they moved down the pike, 
through a country marvellous to the Georgians and Texans. Sunset 
came, and still they marched; dark, and still they marched; midnight, 
and, extremely weary, they halted in a region of hills running up 
to the stars. Reveille sounded ‘startlingly soon. The troops had 
breakfast while the stars were fading, and found themselves in col- 
umn on the pike under the first pink streakings of the dawn. They 
looked around for the Army of the Valley. A little to the northeast 
showed a few light curls of smoke, such as might be made by picket 
fires. They fancied, too, that they heard, from behind the screen of 
hills, faint bugle-calls, bugle answering bugle, like the cocks at 
morn. If it wereso, they were thin and far away, “ horns of elfland.” 
Evidently the three brigades must restrain their impatience for an 
hour or two. 

In the upshot it proved that they were not yet to fraternize with 
the Army of the Valley. When presently, they marched, it was up 
the Valley, back along the pike toward Staunton. The three briga- 
diers conferred together. Whiting, the senior, a veteran soldier, 
staunch and determined, was angry. “ Reasonable men should not 
be treated so! ‘ You will start at four, General Whiting, and march 
until midnight, when you will bivouac. At early dawn a courier will 
bring you further instructions.’ Very good! We march and bivouac, 
and here’s the courier. ‘The brigades of Whiting, Hood, and Lawton 
will return to Staunton. There they will receive further instruc- 
tions.’”’ Whiting swore. “ We are getting a taste of his quality with 
a vengeance! Very well! very well! It’s all right —if he wins 
through I’ll applaud, too — but, by God! he ought n’t to treat 
reasonable men so! — Column Forward!”’ 

Under the stately trees at Mt. Meridian, in the golden June 
weather, the Army of the Valley settled to its satisfaction that it 
was about to invade Maryland. Quite an unusual number of straws 
showed which way the wind was blowing. Northern news arrived 
by grapevine, and Northern papers told the army that was what it 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 391 


was going to do, —“‘invade Maryland and move on Washington — 
sixty thousand bloody-minded rebels! ’’ — ‘“‘ Look here, boys, look 
here. Multiplication by division! The Yanks have split each of us 
into four!’’ Richmond papers, received by way of Staunton, di- 
vulged the fact that troops had been sent to the Valley, and opined 
that the other side of Mason and Dixon needed all the men at home. 
The engineers received an order to prepare a new and elaborate 
series of maps of the Valley. They were not told to say nothing about 
it, so presently the army knew that Old Jack was having every rab- 
bit track and rail fence put down on paper. “Poor old Valley! won’t 
she have a scouring!”’ 

The sole question was, when would the operations begin. ‘The 
“foot cavalry” grew tired of verdant meads, June flowers, and 
warbling birds. True, there were clear streams and Mr. Commis- 
sary Banks’s soap, and the clothes got gloriously washed! Uniforms, 
too, got cleaned and patched. “Going calling. Must makea show!” 
and shoes were cobbled. (Cartridge boxes surreptitiously cut to 
pieces for this.) Morning drills occurred of course, and camp duties 
and divine services; but for all these diversions the army wearied of 
Mt. Meridian, and wanted to march. Twenty miles a day — twenty- 
five — even thirty if Old Jack put a point on it! The foot cavalry 
drew the line at thirty-five. It had tried this once, and once was 
enough! In small clasped diaries, the front leaves given over to a 
calendar, a table of weights and measures, a few 1850 census returns, 
and the list of presidents of the United States, stopping at James 
Buchanan, the army recorded that nothing of interest happened at 
Mt. Meridian and that the boys were tired of loafing. 

“How long were they going to stay ?’’ The men pestered the com- 
pany officers, the company asked the regimental, field asked staff, 
staff shook its head and had no idea, a brigadier put the question 
to Major-General Ewell and Old Dick made a statement which 
reached the drummer boys that evening. “ We are resting here for 
just a few days until all the reinforcements are in, and then we 
will proceed to beat up Banks’s quarters again about Strasburg and 
Winchester.” 

On the morning of the seventeenth there was read a general 
order. “Camp to be more strictly policed. Regimental and brigade drill 
ordered. Bridge to be constructed across the Shenandoah. Chapel to be 


é 


392 THE LONG ROLL 


erected. Day of fasting and prayer for the success of our arms on the 
Mississippi.” — “Why, we are going to stay here forever!”” The 
regimental commanders, walking away from drill, each found him- 
self summoned to the presence of his brigadier. “ Good-morning, 
colonel! Just received this order. ‘Cook two days’ rations and 
pack your wagons. Do it quietly.’” 

By evening the troops were in motion, Ewell’s leading brigade 
standing under arms upon a country road, the red sunset thrown 
back from every musket barrel. The brigadier approached Old Dick 
where he sat Rifle beneath a locust tree. ‘‘ Might I be told in which 
direction, sir —”’ 

Ewell looked at him with his bright round eyes, bobbed his head 
and swore. “ By God! General Taylor! I do not know whether we are 
to march north, south, east, or west, or to march at all!”’ There was 
shouting down the line. “Either Old Jack or a rabbit!” Five 
minutes, and Jackson came by. “ You will march south, General 
Ewell.” 

The three brigades of Whiting, Hood, and Lawton, having, like the 
King of France, though not with thirty thousand men, marched up 
the hill and down again, found at Staunton lines of beautifully 
shabby Virginia Central cars, the faithful, rickety engines, the 
faithful, overworked, thin-faced railroad men, and a sealed order 
from General Jackson. “ Take the cars and go to Gordonsville. Go at 
once.’ The reinforcements from Lee left the Valley of Virginia with- 
out having laid eyes upon the army they were supposed to strengthen. 
They had heard its bugles over the hilltops — that was all. 

The Army of the Valley marched south, and at Waynesboro 
struck the road through Rockfish Gap. Moving east through mag- 
nificent scenery, it passed the wall of the Blue Ridge and left for a 
time the Valley of Virginia. Cavalry went before the main body, 
cavalry guarded the rear, far out on the northern flank rode Mun- 
ford’s troopers. At night picket duty proved heavy. In the morning, 
before the bivouacs were left, the troops were ordered to have no 
conversation with chance-met people upon the road. “If anybody 
asks you questions, you are to answer, I don’t know.” The troops 
went on through lovely country, through the June weather, and they 
did not know whither they were going. “ Wandering in the wilder- 
ness! ’’ said the men. “Good Lord! they wandered in the wilderness 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 393 


for forty years!” “Oh, that was Moses! Old Jack ’ll double-quick 
us through on half-rations in three days!”’ 

The morning of the nineteenth found the army bivouacked near 
Charlottesville. An impression prevailed — Heaven knows how or 
why — that Banks had also crossed the Blue Ridge, and that the 
army was about to move to meet him in Madison County. In 
reality, it moved to Gordonsville. Here it found Whiting, Hood, and 
Lawton come in by train from Staunton. Now they fraternized, and 
now the army numbered twenty-two thousand men. At Gordons- 
ville some hours were spent in wondering. One of the chaplains was, 
however, content. The Presbyterian pastor of the place told him in 
deep confidence that he had gathered at headquarters that at early 
dawn the army would move toward Orange Court House and Cul- 
peper, thence on to Washington. The army moved at early dawn, 
but it was toward Louisa Court House. 

Cavalry, artillery, and wagon trains proceeded by the red and 
heavy roads, but from Gordonsville on the Virginia Central helped 
the infantry as best it might. The cars were few and the engine 
almost as overworked as the train men, but the road did its best. 
The trains moved back and forth, took up in succession the rear 
brigade and forwarded them on the march. The men enjoyed these 
lifts. They scrambled aboard, hung out of the window, from the 
platform and from roof, encouraged the engine, offered to push the 
train, and made slighting remarks on the tameness of the scenery. 
“Not like God’s country, back over the mountains!” They yelled 
encouragement to the toiling column on the red roads. “Step 
spryer! Your turn next!” 

Being largely Valley of Virginia Virginians, Louisianians, Geor- 
gians, Texans, and North Carolinians, the army had acquaintance 
slight or none with the country through which it was passing. Gor- 
donsville left behind, unfamiliarity began. “What’s this county ? 
What’s that place over there? What’s that river? Can’t be the 


Potomac, can it? Naw, ’taint wide enough! ”’ — “Gentlemen, I 
think it is the Rappahannock.” — “ Goaway! it is the headwaters of 
the York.””— “ Rapidan maybe, or Rivanna.” — “‘ Probably Pamun- 


key, or the Piankatank, 


Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to bank.” 


394 THE LONG ROLL 


“Why not say the James?” — “ Because it isn’t. We know the 
James.” — ‘‘ Maybe it’s the Chickahominy! I’m sure we’ve 
marched far enough! Think I hear McClellan’s cannon, anyhow!” 
— “Say, captain, is that the river Dan?” —“‘ Forbidden to give 
names! ’’ — “Good Lord! I’d like to see— no, I would n’t like to see 
Old Jack in the Inquisition!” — “I was down here once and I 
think it is the South Anna.” — “It could n’t be — it could n’t be 
Acquia Creek, boys?’”’ — “‘ Acquia Creek! Absurd! You aren’t even 
warm!’’? — “It might be the North Anna.” — “Gentlemen, cease 
this idle discussion. It is the Tiber!” | 

On a sunny morning, somewhere in this terra incognita, one of 
Hood’s Texans chanced, during a halt, to stray into a by-road where 
an ox-heart cherry tree rose lusciously, above a stake and rider 
fence. The Texan looked, set his musket against the rails, and pro- 
ceeded to mount to a green and leafy world where the cherries 
bobbed against his nose. A voice came to him from below. “What 
are you doing up there, sir?” 

The Texan settled himself astridea bough. ‘I don’t reaily know.” 

“Don’t know! To what command do you belong?”’ 

“T don’t know.” 

“You don’t know! What is your State?” 

“Really and truly, I don’t —O Lord!” The Texan scrambled 
down, saluted most shamefacedly. The horseman looked hard and 
grim enough. “‘ Well, sir, what is the meaning of this? And can you 
give me any reason why you should not mount guard for a month?” 

Tears were in the Texan’s eyes. “General, general! I didn’t 
know ’t was you! Give you my word, sir, I thought it was just any- 
body! We’ve had orders every morning to say, “I don’t know’ — 
and it’s gotten to be a joke — and I was just fooling. Of course, sir, 
I don’t mean that it has gotten to be a joke —only that we all say 
‘I don’t know’ when we ask each other questions, and I hope, sir, 
that you’ll understand that I did n’t know that ’t was you —”’ 

“T understand,” said Jackson. “‘ You might get me a handful of 
cherries.” 

On the twenty-first the leading brigades reached Fredericksburg. 
“To-morrow is Sunday,” said the men. ‘‘That ought to mean a 
battle!’ While wood and water were being gotten that evening, a 
rumour went like a zephyr from company to company: “ We’ll wait 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 395 


here until every regiment is up. Then we’ll move north to Fred- 
ericksburg and meet McDowell.” 

The morrow came, a warm, bright Sunday. The last brigade got 
up, the artillery arrived, the head of the ammunition train appeared 
down the road. There were divine services, but no battle. The men 
rested, guessing Fredericksburg and McDowell, guessing Richmond 
and McClellan, guessing return to the Valley and Shields, Frémont, 
Banks, and Sigel. They knew now that they were within fifty miles 
of Richmond; but if they were going there anyhow, why — why — 
why in the name of common sense had General Lee sent Whiting, 
Hood, and Lawton to the Valley? Wasit reasonable to suppose that 
he had marched them a hundred and twenty miles just to march 
them back a hundred and twenty miles? The men agreed that it 
was n’t common sense. Still,a number had Richmond firmly fixed in 
their minds. Others conceived it not impossible that the Army of the 
Valley might be on its way to Tennessee to take Memphis, or even 
to Vicksburg, to sweep the foe from Mississippi. The men lounged 
beneath the trees, or watched the weary Virginia Central bringing 
in the fag end of things. Fredericksburg was now the road’s ter- 
minus; beyond, the line had been destroyed by a cavalry raid of 
McClellan’s. 

Stonewall Jackson made his headquarters in a quiet home, shaded 
with trees and with flowers in the yard. Sunday evening the lady of 
the house sent a servant to the room where he sat with his chief of 
staff. ‘‘Ole Miss, she say, gineral, dat she hope fer de honour ob yo’ 
brekfastin’ wif her —” | 

The general rolled a map and tied it with a bit of pink tape. “Tell 
Mrs. Harris, with my compliments, that if I am here at breakfast 
time I shall be most happy to take it with her.” 

“Thank you, sah. An’ what hour she say, gineral, will suit you 
Des 

“Tell her, with my compliments, that I trust she will breakfast at 
the usual hour.” 

_ Morning cameand breakfast time. ‘‘Ole Miss” sent to notify the 
general. The servant found the room empty and the bed unslept in 
— only the dictionary and Napoleon’s Maxims (the Bible was gone) 
on the table to testify to its late occupancy. Jim, the general’s body 
servant, emerged from an inner room. “ Gineral Jackson? Fo’ de 


496 THE LONG ROLL 


Lawd, niggah! yo’ ain’t looking ter fin’ de gineral heah at dis heah 
hour? He done clar out ’roun’ er bout midnight. Reckon by now 
he’s whipping de Yankees in de Valley!” 

In the dark night, several miles from Frederickshall, two riders, 
one leading, one following, came upon a picket. ‘‘ Halt!” There 
sounded the click of a musket. The two halted. 

“Jest two of you? Advance, number one, and give the counter- 
sign!” 

“‘T am an officer bearing dispatches —”’ 

“That air not the point! Give the countersign!” 

“‘T have a pass from General Whiting —”’ 

“ This aira Stonewall picket. Ef you’ve got the word, give it, and 
ef you have n’t got it my hand air getting mighty wobbly on this 
gun!” 

“‘T am upon an important mission from General Jackson —’ 

“It air not any more important than my orders air! You get down 
from that thar horse and mark time!’ 

“That is not necessary. Call your officer of guard.” 

“Thank you for the sug-ges-tion,” said Billy politely. ‘And 
don’t you move while I carry it out!” He put his fingers to his lips 
and whistled shrilly. A sergeant and two men came tumbling out 
of the darkness. ‘‘ What is it, Maydew?”’ 

“Tt air a man trying to get by without the countersign.”’ 

The first horseman moved a little to one side. ‘“‘Come here, ser- 
geant! Have you got a light? Wait, I will strike a match.” 

He struck it, and it flared up, making for an instant a space of 
light. Both the sergeant and Billy saw his face. The sergeant’s hand 
went up to his cap with an involuntary jerk; he fell back from the 
rein he had been holding. Billy almost dropped his musket. He 
gasped weakly, then grew burning red. Jackson threw down the 
match. “Good! good! I see that I can trust my pickets. What is 
the young man named ?”’ 

“Billy Maydew, sir. Company A, 6sth Virginia.” 

“Good! good! Obedience to orders is a soldier’s first, last, and 
best lesson! He will do well.” He gathered up the reins. “‘ There are 
four men here. You will all forget that you have seen me, sergeant.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Good! Good-night.”’ 


3 


y 


THE LONGEST WAY ROUND 397 


He was gone, followed by the courier. Billy drew an almost 
sobbing breath. “‘I gave him such a damned lot of impudence! He 
was hiding his voice, and not riding Little Sorrel, or I would have 
known him.” 

The sergeant comforted him. “Just so you were obeying orders 
and watching and handling your gun all right, he didn’t care! I 
gather you did n’t use any cuss words. He seemed kind of satisfied 
with you.” 

The night was dark, Louisa County roads none of the best. As the 
cocks were crowing, a worthy farmer, living near the road, was 
awakened by the sound of horses. ‘‘ Wonder who’s that ? — Tired 
horses — one of them’s gone lame. They’re stopping here.” 

He slipped out of bed and went to the window. Just light enough 
to see by. ‘‘ Who’s there ?” 

“Two Confederate officers on important business. Our horses are 
tired. Have you two good fresh ones ?” 

“Tf I’ve got them, I don’t lend them to every straggler claiming 
to be a Confederate officer on important business! You’d better go 
further. Good-night!”’ 

‘‘T have an order from General Whiting authorizing me to impress 
horses.”’ 

The farmer came out of the house, into the chill dawn. One of the 
two strangers took the stable key and went off to the building loom- 
ing in the background. The other sat stark and stiff in the grey 
light. The first returned. ‘Two in very good condition, sir. If 
you ’ll dismount Ill change saddles and leave our two in the stalls.” 

The officer addressed took his large feet out of the stirrups, tucked 
his sabre under his arm, and stiffly dismounted. Waiting for the 
fresh horses, he looked at the angry farmer. “It is for the good of 
the State, sir. Moreover, we leave you ours in their places.”’ 

“T am as good a Virginian as any, sir, with plenty of my folks in 
the army! And one horse ain’t as good as another — not when one 
of yoursis your daughter’s and you ’ve ridden the other to the Court 
House and to church for twelve years —” 

“That is so true, sir,’ answered the officer, ‘that I shall take 
pleasure in seeing that, when this need is past, your horses are re- 
turned to you. I promise you that you shall have them back ina 
very few days. What church do you attend ?”’ 


398 THE LONG ROLL 


The second soldier returned with the horses. The first mounted 
stiffly, pulled a forage cap over his eyes, and gathered up the reins. 
The light had now really strengthened. All things were less like 
shadows. The Louisa County man saw his visitor somewhat plainly, 
and it came into his mind that he had seen him before, though where 
or when — He wasall wrapped up in a cloak, witha cap over his eyes. 
The two hurried away, down the Richmond road, and the despoiled 
farmer began to think: ‘“ Where’d I see him— Richmond? No, 
’t was n’t Richmond. After Manassas, when I went to look for 
Hugh? Rappahannock? No, ’t wasn’t there. Lexington? Good 
God! That was Stonewall Jackson!” 


ChaPliR xxix 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 


city of Richmond, forty thousand souls, lay, fevered enough, on 

her seven hills. Over her floated the stars and bars. In her 
streets rolled the drum. Here it beat quick and bright, marking the 
passage of some regiment from the defences east or south to the 
defences north. There it beat deep and slow, a muffled drum, a 
Dead March—some officer killed in a skirmish, or dying in a hos- 
pital, borne now to Hollywood. Elsewhere, quick and bright again, 
it meant Home Guards going to drill. From the outskirts of the town 
might be heard the cavalry bugles blowing, — from the Brook turn- 
pike and the Deep Run turnpike, from Meadow Bridge road and 
Mechanicsville road, from Nine-Mile and Darbytown and Williams- 
burg stage roads and Osborne’s old turnpike, and across the river 
from the road to Fort Darling. From the hilltops, from the portico 
or the roof of the Capitol, might be seen the camp-fires of Lee’s fifty 
thousand men — the Confederate Army of the Potomac, the Army 
of the Rappahannock, the Army of Norfolk, the Army of the Penin- 
sula — four armies waiting for the arrival of the Army of the Valley 
to coalesce and become the Army of Northern Virginia. The curls 
of smoke went up, straight, white, and feathery. With a glass might 
be seen at various points the crimson flag, with the blue St. Andrew’s 
cross and the stars, eleven stars, a star for each great State of the 
Confederacy. By the size you knew the arm — four feet square for 
infantry, three feet square for artillery, two and a half by two and a 
half for cavalry. 

The light lay warm on the Richmond houses — on mellow red 
brick, on pale grey stucco. It touched old iron-work balconies and 
ivy-topped walls, and it gilded the many sycamore trees, and lay 
in pools on the heavy leaves of the magnolias. Below the pillared 
Capitol, in the green up and down of the Capitol Square, in Main 
Street, in Grace Street by St. Paul’s, before the Exchange, the 


|: the golden afternoon light of the twenty-third of June, the 


400 THE LONG ROLL 


Ballard House, the Spotswood, on Shockoe Hill by the President’s 
House, through all the leafy streets there was vivid movement. In 
this time and place Life was so near to Death; the ocean of pain 
and ruin so evidently beat against its shores, that from very contrast 
and threatened doom Life took a higher light, a deeper splendour. 
All its notes resounded, nor did it easily relinquish the major key. 

In the town were many hospitals. These were being cleaned, aired, 
and put in order against the impending battles. The wounded in 
them now, chiefly men from the field of Seven Pines, looked on and 
hoped for the best. Taking them by and large, the wounded were a 
cheerful set. Many could sit by the windows, in the perfumed air, 
and watch the women of the South, in their soft, full gowns, going 
about their country’s business. Many of the gowns were black. 

About the hotels, the President’s House, the governor’s mansion, 
and the Capitol, the movement was of the official world. Here were 
handsome men in broadcloth, grown somewhat thin, somewhat 
rusty, but carefully preserved and brushed. Some were of the old 
school and still affected stocks and ruffled shirts. As a rule they 
were slender and tall, and as a rule wore their hair a little long. 
Many were good Latinists, most were good speakers. One and all 
they served their states as best they knew how, overworked and 
anxious, facing privation here in Richmond with the knowledge 
that things were going badly at home, sitting long hours in Congress, 
in the Hall of Delegates, in courts or offices, struggling there with 
Herculean difficulties, rising to go out and listen to telegrams or to 
read bulletins. Sons, brothers, kinsmen, and friends were in the 
field. 

This golden afternoon, certain of the latter had ridden in from the 
lines upon this or that business connected with their commands. 
They were not many, for all the world knew there would be a deadly 
fighting presently, deadly and prolonged. Men and officers must 
stay within drumbeat. Those who were for an hour in Richmond, 
in their worn grey uniforms, with the gold lace grown tarnished 
(impossible of replacement!), with their swords not tarnished, their 
netted silk sashes, their clear bright eyes and keen thin faces, found 
friends enough as they went to and fro— more eager questioners 
and eager listeners than they could well attend to. One, a general 
officer, a man of twenty-nine, in a hat with a long black plume, with 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 401 


the most charming blue eyes, and a long bronze, silky, rippling beard 
which he constantly stroked, could hardly move for the throng about 
him. Finally, in the Capitol Square, he backed his horse against the 
railing about the great equestrian Washington. The horse, a noble 
animal, arched his neck. There was around it a wreath of bright 
flowers. The rider spoke in an enchanting voice. “‘ Now if I tell you 
in three words howit was and what we did, will you let me go? I’ve 
got to ride this afternoon to Yellow Tavern.”’ 

“Yes, yes! Tell us, General Stuart.” 

‘“‘My dear people, it was the simplest thing in the world! A man 
in the First has made a song about it, and Sweeney has set it to the 
banjo— if you'll come out to the camp after the battle you shall 
hear it! General Lee wanted to know certain things about the 
country behind McClellan. Now the only way to know a thing is to 
go and look at it. He ordered a reconnoissance in force. I took 
twelve hundred cavalrymen and two guns of the horse artillery and 
made the reconnoissance. Is there anything else that you want to 
know ?” 

“Be good, general, and tell us what you did.” 

“T am always good — just born so! I rode round McClellan’s 
army — Don’t cheer like that! The town’ll think it’s Jackson, 
come from the Valley!” 

“Tell us, general, how you did it 

“Gentlemen, I have n’t time. If you like, I’ll repeat the man in 
the First’s verses, and then I’m going. You’ll excuse the metre? 
A poor, rough, unlearned cavalryman did it. 


12 


“Fitz Lee, Roony Lee, Breathed and Stuart, 
Martin to help, and Heros von Borcke, 
First Virginia, Fourth, Ninth, two guns and a Legion — 
From Hungary Run to Laurel Hill Fork, 


‘By Ashland, Winston, Hanover, Cash Corner, 
Enon Church, Salem Church, Totopotomoy, Old Church, 


“You observe that we are trotting. 


“By Hamstead, Garlick, Tunstall Station, Talleyville, 
Forge Mill, Chickahominy, Sycamore, White Birch. 


“Here we change gait. 


402 THE LONG ROLL 


“By Hopewell and Christian, Wilcox and Westover, 
Turkey Bridge, Malvern Hill, Deep Bottom and Balls 
Four days, forty leagues, we rode round McClellan 
As Jeremiah paced round Jericho’s walls. — ” 


“Tt was n’t Jeremiah, general! It was Joshua.” 
“Ts that so? I’ll tell Sweeney. Anyhow, the walls fell. 


“Halt! Advance! Firing! Engagement at Hanover. 
Skirmish at Taliaferro’s. Skirmish at Hawes. 
Tragic was Totopotomoy, for there we lost Latané 

Hampden-like, noble, dead for his Cause. 


“At Old Church broke up meeting. Faith! ’t was a pity 
But indigo azure was pulpit and pew! 
Fitz Lee did the job. Sent his love to Fitz Porter. 
Good Lord! Of Mac’s Army the noble review! 


“There is n’t anything our horses can’t do. 


“Tunstall Station was all bubbly white with wagons. 
We fired those trains, those stores, those sheltering sheds! 
And then we burned three transports on Pamunkey 
And shook the troops at White House from their beds! 


“Loud roars across our path the swollen Chickahominy 
‘Plunge in, Confeds! you were not born to drown.’ 
We danced past White Oak swamp, we danced past Fighting Joseph 
Hooker! 
We rode round McClellan from his sole to his crown! 


“There are strange, strange folk who like the Infantry! 
Men have been found to love Artillery. 
McClellan’s quoted thus ‘In every family 
There should exist a gunboat’ —ah, but we, 
Whom all arms else do heap with calumny, 
Saying, ‘ Daily those damned centaurs put us up a tree!’ 
We insist upon the virtues of the Cavalry! 


“Now, friends, I’m going! It was a beautiful raid! I always liked 
Little Mac. He’s a gentleman, and he’s got a fine army. Except 
for poor Latané we did not lose a man. But I left a general behind 
me. 

““A general? General who—”’ 

Stuart gave his golden laugh. ‘‘ General Consternation.” 

The sun slipped lower. Two horsemen came in by the Deep Run 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 403 


road and passed rapidly eastward through the town. The afternoon 
was warm, but the foremost wore a great horseman’s cloak. It made 
all outlines indefinite and hid any insignia of rank. There was a hat 
or cap, too, pulled low. It was dusty; he rode fast and in a cloud, 
and there came no recognition. Out of the town, on the Nine-Mile 
road, he showed the officer of the guard who stopped him a pass 
signed “‘R. E. Lee” and entered the Confederate lines. “ General 
Lee’s headquarters?”’ They were pointed out, an old house shaded 
by oaks. He rode hither, gave his horse to the courier with him, 
and spoke to the aide who appeared. ‘Tell General Lee, some one 
from the Valley.” 

The aide shot a quick glance, then opened a door to the left. 
‘“General Lee will be at leisure presently. Will you wait here, sir?”’ 

He from the Valley entered. It was a large, simply furnished 
room, with steel engravings on the walls, —the 1619 House of Bur- 
gesses, Spotswood on the Crest of the Blue Ridge with his Golden 
Horseshoe Knights, Patrick Henry in Old St. John’s, Jefferson 
writing the Declaration of Independence, Washington receiving 
the Sword of Cornwallis. The windows were open to the after- 
noon breeze and the birds were singing in a rosebush outside. 
There were three men in the room. One having a large frame and a 
somewhat heavy face kept the chair beside the table with a kind of 
granite and stubborn air. He rested like a boulder on a mountain 
slope; marked with old scars, only waiting to be set in motion 
again to grind matters small. The second man, younger, slender, 
with a short red beard, leaned against the window, smelled the roses, 
and listened to the birds. The third, a man of forty, with a gentle 
manner and very honest and kindly eyes, studied the engravings. 
All three wore the stars of major-generals. 

The man from the Valley, entering, dropped his cloak and showed 
the same insignia. D.H. Hill, leaving the engravings, came forward 
and took him by both hands. The two had married sisters; moreover 
each was possessed of fiery religious convictions; and Hill, though 
without the genius of the other, was a cool, intelligent, and deter- 
mined fighter. The two had not met since Jackson’s fame had come 
upon him. 

It clothed him now like a mantle. The man sitting by the table 
got ponderously to his feet; the one by the window left the contem- 


404 THE LONG ROLL 


plation of the rosebush. “ You know one another by name only, I 
believe, gentlemen?” said D. H. Hill. “General Jackson — Gen- 
eral Longstreet, General Ambrose Powell Hill.” 

The four sat down, Jackson resting his sabre across his knees. 
He had upon him the dust of three counties; he was all one neutral 
hue like a faded leaf, save that his eyes showed through, grey-blue, 
intense enough, though quiet. He was worn to spareness. 

Longstreet spoke in his heavy voice. “Well, general, Fate is 
making of your Valley the Flanders of this war.” _ 

“God made it a highway, sir. We must take it as we find it.” 

“Well,” said A. P. Hill, smiling, “since we have a Marlborough 
for that Flanders —” 

Jackson shifted the sabre a little. ‘“‘ Marlborough is not my beau 
ideal. He had circumstances too much with him.” 

An inner door opened. “The artillery near Cold Harbour —”’ 
said a voice, cadenced and manly. In a moment Lee entered. The 
four rose. He went straight to Stonewall Jackson, laid one hand on 
his shoulder, the other on his breast. The two had met, perhaps, in 
Mexico; not since. Now they looked each other in the eyes. Both 
were tall men, though Lee was the tallest; both in grey, both thin 
from the fatigue of the field. Here the resemblance ended. Lee was 
a model of manly beauty. His form, like his character, was justly 
proportioned; he had a great head, grandly based, a face of noble 
sweetness, a step light and dauntless. There breathed about him 
something knightly, something kingly, an antique glamour, sunny 
shreds of the Golden Age. “‘ You are welcome, General Jackson,” he 
said; ‘very welcome! You left Frederickshall— ?” 

“Last night, sir.” 

“The army is there?” 

“It is there, sir.” 

“You have become a name to conjure with, general! I think that 
your Valley will never forget you.” He took a chair beside the 
table. “‘Sit down, gentlemen. I have called this council, and now 
the sun is sinking and General Jackson has far to ride, and we must 
hasten. Here are the maps.” 

The major-generals drew about the table. Lee pinned down a 
map with the small objects upon the board, then leaned back in his 
chair. “This is our first council with General Jackson. We wait but 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 405 


for the Army of the Valley to precipitate certainly one great battle, 
perhaps many battles. I think that the fighting about Richmond 
will be heavier than all that has gone before.” An aide entered 
noiselessly with a paper in his hand. “ From the President, sir,” he 
said. Lee rose and took the note to the window. The four at table 
spoke together in low tones. 

“Tt is the most difficult ground in the world,” said A. P. Hill. 
“You'll have another guess-time of it than in your Valley, general! 
No broad pike through the marshes of the Chickahominy!”’ 

“Are there good maps?” 

“No,” said Longstreet; “damned bad.” 

Jackson stiffened. D.H. Hill camein hastily. ‘It’s rather difficult 
to draw them accurately with a hundred and ten thousand Yankees 
lying around loose. They should have been made last year.”’ 

Lee returned. “ Yes, the next ten days will write a page in blood.” 
He sighed. ‘‘I do not like war, gentlemen. Now, to begin again! We 
are agreed that to defend Richmond is imperative. When Richmond 
falls the Confederacy falls. It is our capital and seat of government. 
Here only have we railroad communications with the far South. 
Here are our arsenals and military manufactories, our depots of 
supply, our treasury, our hospitals, our refugee women and children. 
The place is our heart, and arm and brain must guard it. Leave 
Richmond and we must withdraw from Virginia. Abandon Vir- 
ginia, and we can on our part no longer threaten the northern capi- 
tal. Then General Jackson cannot create a panic every other day, 
nor will Stanton then withdraw on every fresh alarm a division 
from McClellan.” 

He leaned his head on his hand, while with the firm fingers of the 
other he measured the edge of the table. “No! It is the game of the 
two capitals, and the board is the stretch of country between. To 
the end they will attempt to reach Richmond. To the end we must 
prevent that mate. Let us see their possible roads. Last year 
McDowell tried it by Manassas, and he failed. It is a strategic 
point,— Manassas. There may well be fighting there again. The 
road by Fredericksburg . . . they have not tried that yet, and yet 
it has a value. Now the road that McClellan has taken, — by sea to 
Fortress Monroe, and so here before us by the York, seeing that the 
Merrimac kept him from the James. It is the best way yet, though 


406 THE LONG ROLL 


with a modification it would be better! There is a key position 
which I trust he’ll not discover —”’ 

“He won’t,” said D. H. Hill succinctly. ‘ The fairies at his cradle 
did n’t give him intuition, and they made him extremely cautious. 
He’s a good fellow, though!” 

Lee nodded. “I have very genuine respect for General McClellan. 
He is a gentleman, a gallant soldier, and a good general.’’ He pushed 
the map before him away, and took another. “Of late Richmond’s 
strongest defence has been General Jackson in the Valley. Well! 
McDowell and Frémont and Banks may be left awhile to guard 
that capital which is so very certain it is in danger. I propose now 
to bring General Jackson suddenly upon McClellan’s right —” 

Jackson, who had been holding himself with the rigidity of a war- 
rior on a tomb, slightly shifted the sabre and drew his chair an inch 
nearer the commander-in-chief. “‘ His right is on the north bank of 
the Chickahominy —” 

“Yes. General Stuart brought me much information that I 
desired. Fitz John Porter commands there— the 5th Army Corps 
— twenty-five thousand men. I propose, general, that you bring 
your troops as rapidly as possible from Frederickshall to Ashland, 
that from Ashland you march by the Ashcake road and Merry Oaks 
Church to the Totopotomoy Creek road and that, moving by this 
to Beaver Dam Creek, you proceed to turn and dislodge Porter and 
his twenty-five thousand, crumpling them back upon McClellan’s 
centre — here.” He pointed with a quill which he took from the ink- 
well. 

“Good! good! And the frontal attack ?” 

“General A. P. Hill and his division will make that. The bat- 
teries on the Chickahominy will cover his passage of the bridge. 
General Longstreet will support him. General Magruder with Gen- 
eral Huger and the reserve artillery will be left before Richmond. 
They will so demonstrate as to distract General McClellan’s atten- 
tion from the city and from his right and General Porter. General 
Stuart will take position on your line of march from Ashland, and 
General D. H. Hill will support you.” 

“Good! good! This is the afternoon of the twenty-third.” 

“Yes. Frederickshall is forty miles from this point —” He 
touched the map again. ‘‘ Now, general, when can you be here?” 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 407 


“Thursday morning, the twenty-sixth, sir.”’ 

“That is very soon.”’ 

“Time is everything in war, sir.” 

“That is perfectly true. But the time is short and the manceuvre 
delicate. You and your troops are at the close of a campaign as ardu- 
ous as it is amazing. The fatigue and the strain must be great. You 
and General Hill are far apart and the country between is rough and 
unmapped. Yet victory depends on the simultaneous blow.” 

Jackson sat rigid again, his hand stiffly placed upon the sabre. 
“Tt is not given to man to say with positiveness what he can do, sir. 
But it is necessary that this right be turned before McClellan is 
aware of his danger. Each day makes it more difficult to conceal 
the absence of my army from the Valley. Between the danger of 
forced marching and the obvious danger that lies in delay, I should 
choose the forced marching. Better lose one man in marching than 
five in a battle not of our selecting. A straw may bring failure asa 
straw may bring victory. I may fail, but the risk should be taken. 
Napoleon failed at Eylau, but his plan was correct.” 

“Very well,” said Lee. “Then the morning of the twenty-sixth 
be it! Final orders shall await you at Ashland.” 

Jackson rose. “Good! good! By now my horses will have been 
changed. I will get back. The army was to advance this morning to 
Beaver Dam Station.” 

He rode hard through the country all night, it being the second 
he had spent in the saddle. Beaver Dam Station and the bivouack- 
ing Army of the Valley saw him on Tuesday morning the twenty- 
fourth. ‘Old Jack’s back from wherever he’s been!”’ went the 
rumour. Headquarters was established in a hut or two near the 
ruined railroad. Arriving here, he summoned his staff and sent for 
Ewell. While the former gathered he read a report, forwarded from 
Munford in the rear. “Scout Gold and Jarrow in from the Valley. 
Frémont still fortifying at Strasburg — thinks you may be at Front 
Royal. Shields at Luray considers that you may have gone to Rich- 
mond, but that Ewell remains in the Valley with forty thousand 
men. Banks at Winchester thinks you may have gone against 
Shields at Luray, or King at Catlett’s, or Doubleday at Fredericks- 
burg, or gone to Richmond — but that Ewell is moving west on 
Moorefield!” 


408 THE LONG ROLL 


“Good! good!” said Jackson. Staff arrived, and he proceeded to 
issue rapid and precise orders. All given, staff hurried off, and the 
general spoke to Jim. “Call me when General Ewell comes.”’ He 
stretched himself on a bench in the hut. ‘‘I am suffering,” he said, 
“from fever and a feeling of debility.” He drew his cloak about him 
and closed his eyes. It was but half an hour, however, that he slept 
or did not sleep, for Ewell was fiery prompt. 

The Army of the Valley entered upon a forced march through 
country both difficult and strange. It had been of late in the pos- 
session of the enemy, and the enemy had stretched felled trees across 
forest roads and burned the bridges spanning deep and sluggish 
creeks. Guides were at fault, cross-roads directions most uncertain. 
The wood grew intolerably thick, and the dust of the roads was 
atrocious; the air cut away by the tall green walls on either hand; the 
sun like a furnace seven times heated. Provisions had not come up 
in time at Beaver Dam Station and the troops marched upon half- 
rations. Gone were the mountains and the mountain air, present 
was the languorous breath of the low country. It had an upas qual- 
ity, dulling the brain, retarding the step. The men were very tired, 
it was hot, and a low fever hung in the air. 

They marched until late of a night without a moon, and the bugles 
waked them long ere dawn. A mist hung over all the levels, presag- 
ing heat. Column Forward ! Today wasa repetition of yesterday, only 
accented. The sun girded himself with greater strength, the dust 
grew more stifling, the water was bad, gnats and mosquitoes made 
a painful cloud, the feet in the ragged shoes were more stiff, more 
swollen, more abraded. The moisture in the atmosphere weakened 
likea vapour bath. The entire army, “ foot cavalry” and all, marched 
with a dreadful slowness. Press Forward — Press Forward — Press 
Forward — Press Forward! It grew to be like the humming insects 
on either hand, a mere noise to be expected. ‘‘ Going to Richmond 
— Going to Richmond — Yes, of course we’re going to Richmond 
— unless, indeed, we’re going a roundabout way against McDowell 
at Fredericksburg! Richmond willkeep. It has kept a long time — 
ever since William Byrd founded it. General Lee is there—and so 
it is all right — and we can’t go any faster. War isn’t all it’s cracked 
up to be. Oh, hot, hot, hot! and skeetery! and General Humidity 
lives down this way. Press Forward — Press Forward — Press For- 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 409 


ward. If that noise don’t stop I’ll up with my musket butt and beat 
somebody’s brains out!” 

Ashland was not reached until the late evening of this day. The 
men fell upon the earth. Even under the bronze there could be seen 
dark circles under their eyes, and their lips were without colour. 
Jackson rode along the lines and looked. There were circles beneath 
his own eyes, and his lips shut thin and grey. ‘‘Let them rest,” he 
said imperturbably, “until dawn.” There rode beside him an officer 
from Lee. He had now the latter’s General Order, and he was almost 
a day behind. 

Somewhat later, in the house which he occupied, his chief of 
staff, Ewell and the brigadiers gone, the old man, Jim, appeared 
before him. ‘“‘ Des you lis’en ter me er minute, gineral! Ob my sar- 
tain circumspection I knows you did n’t go ter bed las’ night — nurr 
de night befo’ — nurr de night befo’ dat — ’n’ I don’ see no preper- 
ation for yo’ gwine ter bed dishyer night! Now, dat ain’ right. 
W’at Miss Anna gwine say w’en she heah erbout hit? She gwine say 
you ’stress her too much. She gwine say you'll git dar quicker, ’n’ 
fight de battle better, ef you lie down erwhile ’n’ let Jim bring you 
somethin’ ter eat —”’ 

“T have eaten. I am going to walk in the garden for awhile.” 

He went, all in bronze, with a blue gleam in his eye. Jim looked 
after him with a troubled countenance. “ Gwine talk wif de Lawd — 
talk all night long! Hit ain’ healthy. Pray an’ pray ’n’ look up ter de 
sky ’twel he gits paralysis! De gineral better le’ me tek his boots 
off, ’n’ go ter bed ’n’ dream ob Miss Anna!”’ 

At three the bugles blew. Again there was incalculable delay. 
The sun was up ere the Army of the Valley left Ashland. It was 
marching now in double column, Jackson by the Ashcake road and 
Merry Oaks Church, Ewell striking across country, the rendezvous 
Pole Green Church, a little north and east of Mechanicsville and the 
Federal right. The distance that each must travel was something 
like sixteen miles. 

The spell of yesterday persisted and became the spell of to-day. 
Sixteen miles would have been nothing in the Valley; in these green 
and glamoury lowlands they became like fifty. Stuart’s cavalry 
began to appear, patrols here, patrols there, vedettes rising stark 
from the broom sedge, or looming double, horsemen and shadow, 


410 THE LONG ROLL 


above and within some piece of water, dark, still, and clear. Time 
was when the Army of the Valley would have been curious and 
excited enough over Jeb Stuart’s troopers, but now it regarded them 
indifferently with eyes glazed with fatigue. At nine the army crossed 
the ruined line of the Virginia Central, Hood’s Texans leading. An 
hour later it turned southward, Stuart on the long column’s left 
flank, screening it from observation, and skirmishing hotly through 
the hours that ensued. The army crossed Crump’s Creek, passed 
Taliaferro’s Mill, crossed other creeks, crept southward through 
hot, thick woods. Mid-day came and passed. The head of the 
column turned east, and came shortly to a cross-roads. Here, await- 
ing it, was Stuart himself, in his fighting jacket. Jackson drew up 
Little Sorrel beside him. “‘ Good-morning, general.” 

“‘Good-morning, general —or rather, good-afternoon. I had 
hoped to see you many hours ago.”’ 

‘My men are not superhuman, sir. There have occurred delays. 
But God is over us still.” 

He rode on. Stuart, looking after him, raised his brows. “In my 
opinion A. P. Hill is waiting for a man in a trance!” 

The army turned southward again, marching now toward Toto- 
potomoy Creek, the head of the column approaching it at three 
o’clock. Smoke before the men, thick, pungent, told a tale to which 
they were used. “ Bridge on fire!’’ It was, and on the far side of the 
creek appeared a party in blue engaged in obstructing the road. 
Hood’s Texans gave a faint cheer and dashed across, disappearing in 
flame, emerging from it and falling upon the blue working party. 
Reilly’s battery was brought up; a shell or two fired. The blue left 
the field, and the grey pioneers somehow fought the flames and 
rebuilt the bridge. An hour was gone before the advance could cross 
on a trembling structure. Over at last, the troops went on, south- 
ward still, to Hundley Corner. Here Ewell’s division joined them, 
and here to the vague surprise of an exhausted army came the order 
to halt. The Army of the Valley went into bivouac three miles 
north of that right which, hours before, it was to have turned. It was 
near sunset. As the troops stacked arms, to the south of them, on 
the other side of Beaver Dam Creek, burst out an appalling can- 
nonade. Trimble, a veteran warrior, was near Jackson. ‘‘That has 
the sound of a general engagement, sir! Shall we advance?”’ 


THE NINE-MILE ROAD 411 


Jackson looked at him with a curious serenity. ‘It is the batter- 
ies on the Chickahominy covering General Hill’s passage of the 
stream. He will bivouac over there, and to-morrow will see the bat- 
tle — Have you ever given much attention, general, to the subject 
of growth in grace?”’ 


CHAPTER XXX 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 


converted into a hospital. Conveniently situated, it had 

received many of the more desperately wounded from Wil- 
liamsburg and Seven Pines and from the skirmishes about the 
Chickahominy and up and down the Peninsula. Typhoid and 
malarial cases, sent in from the lines, were also here in abundance. 
To a great extent, as June wore on, the wounded from Williamsburg 
and Seven Pines had died and been buried, or recovered and re- 
turned to their regiments, or, in case of amputations, been carried 
away after awhile by their relatives. Typhoid and malaria could 
hardly be said to decrease, but yet, two days before the battle of 
Mechanicsville, the warehouse seemed, comparatively speaking, a 
cool and empty place. 

It was being prepared against the battles for which the beleaguered 
city waited — waited heartsick and aghast or lifted and fevered, as 
the case might be. On the whole, the tragic mask was not worn; 
the city determinedly smiled. The three floors of the warehouse, 
roughly divided into wards, smelled of strong soap and water and 
home-made disinfectants. The windows were wide; swish, swish! 
went the mops upon the floors. A soldier, with his bandaged leg 
stretched on a chair before him, took to scolding: “ Women certainly 
are funny! What’s the sense of wiping down walls and letting James 
River run over the floors? Might be some sense in doing it after the 
battle! Here, Sukey, don’t splash that water this a-way! — Won’t 
keep the blood from the floor when they all come piling in here 
to-morrow, and makes all of us damned uncomfortable to-day! — 
Beg your pardon, Mrs. Randolph! Did n’t see you, ma’am. — Yes, 
I should like a game of checkers — if we can find an island to 
play on!”’ 

The day wore on in the hospital. Floors and walls were all 
scrubbed, window-panes glistening, a Sunday freshness everywhere. 


\ LARGE warehouse on Main Street in Richmond had been 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 413 


The men agreed that housecleaning was all right — after it was 
over. The remnant of the wounded occupied the lower floor; typhoid, 
malaria, and other ills were upstairs. Stores were being brought in, 
packages of clothing and lint received at the door. A favorite sur- 
geon made his rounds. He was cool and jaunty, his hands in his 
pockets, a rose in his buttonhole. ‘“‘ What are you malingerers doing 
here, anyhow? You’re eating your white bread, with honey on it — 
you are! Propped up and walking around — Mrs. McGuire reading 
to you — Mrs. Randolph smilingly letting you beat her at her own 
game — Miss Cooper writing beautiful letters for you — Miss Cary 
leaving really ill people upstairs just because one of you is an Albe- 
marle man and might recognize a home face! Well! eat the whole 
slice up to-day, honey and all! for most of you are going home to- 
morrow. Yes, yes! you’re well enough — and we want all the room 
we can get.” 

He went on, Judith Cary with him. “ Whew! we must be going to 
have a fight!” said the men. “ Bigger’n Seven Pines.” 

“Seven Pines was big enough!” 

‘ That was what I thought — facing Casey’s guns! — Your move, 
Mrs. Randolph.”’ 

The surgeon and nurse went on through cool, almost empty 
spaces. ‘This is going,” said the surgeon crisply, “to be an awful 
big war. I should n’t be surprised if it makes a Napoleonic thunder 
down the ages — becomes a mighty legend like Greece and Troy! 
And, do you know, Miss Cary, the keystone of the arch, as 
far as we are concerned, is a composition of three, —the armies in 
the field, the women of the South, and the servants.” 

“You mean” 

“T mean that the conduct of the negroes everywhere is an ever- 
lasting refutation of much of the bitter stuff which is said by the 
other side. This war would crumble like that, if, with all the white 
men gone, there were on the plantations faithlessness to trust, 
hatred, violence, outrage —if there were among us, in Virginia 
alone, half a million incendiaries! There are n’t, thank God! In- 
stead we owe a great debt of gratitude to a dark foster-brother. 
The world knows pretty well what are the armies in the field. But 
for the women, Miss Cary, I doubt if the world knows that the 
women keep plantations, servants, armies, and Confederacy going!”’ 


414 THE LONG ROLL 


“T think,” said Judith, “that the surgeons should have a noble 
statue.” Poe 

“‘Even if we do cut off limbs that might have been saved — hey? 
God knows, they often might! and that there’s haste and waste 
enough! — Here’s Sam, bringing in a visitor. A general, too — 
looks like a Titian I saw once.”’ | 

“Tt is my father,” said Judith. “He told me he would come for 
me.” 

A little later, father and daughter, moving through the ward, 
found the man from Albemarle — not one of those who would go 
away to-morrow. He lay gaunt and shattered, with strained eyes 
and fingers picking at the sheet. ‘Don’t you know me, Mocket?” 

Mocket roused himself for one moment. ‘‘Course I know you, 
general! Crops mighty fine this year! Never saw such wheat!” 
The light sank in his eyes; his face grew as it was before, and his 
fingers picked at the sheet. He spoke in a monotone. ‘“We’ve had 
such a hard time since we left home — We’ve had such a hard time 
since we left home — We’ve had such a hard time since we left 
Mee ee 

Judith dashed her hand across her eyes. ‘‘Come away! He says 
just that all the time!”’ 

They moved through the ward, Warwick Cary speaking to all. 
‘No, men! I can’t tell you just when will be the battle, but we must 
look for it soon — for one or formany. Almost any day now. No, 
I cannot tell you if General Jackson is coming. It is not impossible. 
‘Washington Artillery?’ That’s a command to be proud of. Let 
me see your Tiger Head.” He looked at the badge with its motto 
Try Us, and gave it back smilingly. ‘‘ Well, we do try you, do we 
not?—on every possible occasion! — Fifth North Carolina? 
Wounded at Williamsburg!— King William Artillery ?— Did you 
hear what General D. H. Hill said at Seven Pines? He said that he 
would rather be captain of the King William Artillery than Presi- 
dent of the Confederate States. — Barksdale’s Mississippians ? 
Why, men, you are all by-words!”’ 

The men agreed with him happily. “ You’ve got pretty gallant 
fellows yourself, general!’? The King William man cleared his 
See ‘““He’s got a daughter, too, that I’d like to—I’d like to 
cheer !”’ 


AT THE PRESIDENT'’S 415 


“That’s so, general!” said the men. ‘‘That’sso! She’s a chip of 
the old block.” 

Father and daughter laughed and went on — out of this ward and 
into another, quite empty. The two stood by the door and looked, 
and that sadly enough. “All the cots, all the pallets,” said Cary, in 
a low voice. “And out in the lines, they who will lie upon them! 
And they cannot see them stretching across their path. I do not 
know which place seems now the most ghostly, here or there.”’ 

“Tt was hard to get mattresses enough. So many hospitals — 
and every one has given and given — and beds must be kept for 
those who will be taken to private houses. So, at last, some one 
thought of pew cushions. They have been taken from every church 
in town. See! sewed together, they do very well.” 

They passed into a room where a number of tables were placed, 
and from this into another where several women were arranging 
articles on broad wooden shelves. “If you will wait here, I will go 
slip on my outdoor dress.”” One of the women turned. “Judith! 
— Cousin Cary! — come look at these quilts which have been sent 
from over in Chesterfield!”? She was half laughing, half crying. 
“Rising Suns and Morning Stars and Jonah’s Gourds! Oh me! oh 
me! I can see the poor souls wrapped in them! The worst of it is, 
they ’ll all be used, and we’ll be thankful for them, and wish for 
more! Look at this pile, too, from town! Tarletan dresses cut into 
nets, and these surgeons’ aprons made from damask tablecloths! 
And the last fringed towels that somebody was saving, with the 
monogram so beautifully done!’’ She opened a closet door. ‘Look! 
I’ll scrape lint in my sleep every night for a hundred years! The 
young girls rolled all these bandages —”’ Another called her atten- 
tion. ‘‘ Will you give me the storeroom key? Mrs. Haxall has just 
sent thirty loaves of bread, and says she’ll bake again to-morrow. 
There’s more wine, too, from Laburnum.”’ 

The first came back. ‘‘The room seems full of things, and yet we 
have seen how short a way will go what seems so much! And every 
home gets barer and barer! The merchants are as good as gold. 
They send and send, but the stores are getting bare, too! Kent and 
Paine gave bales and bales of cotton goods. We made them up into 
these —” She ran her hand over great piles of nightshirts and 
drawers. “But now we see that we have nothing like enough, and 


A16 THE LONG ROLL 


the store has given as much again, and in every lecture room in 
town we are sewing hard to get more and yet more done in time. 
The country people are so good! They have sent in quantities of 
bar soap — and we needed it more than almost anything! — and 
candles, and coarse towelling, and meal and bacon —and hard 
enough to spare I don’t doubt it all is! And look here, Cousin Cary!” 
She indicated a pair of crutches, worn smooth with use. To one a 
slip of paper was tied with a thread. Her kinsman bent forward and 
read it: “I kin mannedge with a stick.” 

Judith returned, in her last year’s muslin, soft and full, in the 
shady Eugénie hat which had been sent her from Paris two years 
ago. It went well with the oval face, the heavy bands of soft dark 
hair, the mouth of sweetness and strength, the grave and beautiful 
eyes. Father and daughter, out they stepped into the golden, late 
afternoon. 

Main Street was crowded. A battery, four guns, each with six 
horses, came up it with a heavy and jarring sound over the cobble- 
stones. Behind rode a squad or two of troopers. The people on the 
sidewalk called to the cannoneers cheerful greetings and inquiries, 
and the cannoneers and the troopers returned them in kind. The 
whole rumbled and clattered by, then turned into Ninth Street. 
“Ordered out on Mechanicsville pike — that’s all they know,” said 
a man. 

The two Carys, freeing themselves from the throng, mounted 
toward the Capitol Square, entered it, and walked slowly through 
the terraced, green, and leafy place. There was passing and repass- 
ing, but on the whole the place was quiet. ‘I return to the lines 
to-morrow,” said Warwick Cary. ‘The battle cannot be long post- 
poned. I know that you will not repeat what I say, and so I tell you 
that I am sure General Jackson is on his way from the Valley. Any 
moment he may arrive.” 

‘“‘And then there will be terrible fighting ?”’ 

“Yes; terrible fighting — Look at the squirrels on the grass!”’ 

As always in the square, there were squirrels in the great old trees, 
and on the ground below, and as always there were negro nurses, 
bright turbaned, aproned, ample formed, and capable. With them 
were their charges, in perambulators, or, if older, flitting like white 
butterflies over the slopes of grass. A child of three, in her hand a 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 417 


nut for the squirrel, started to cross the path, tripped and fell. 
General Cary picked her up, and, kneeling, brushed the dust from 
her frock, wooing her to smiles with a face and voice there was no 
resisting. She presently fell in love with the stars on his collar, then 
transferred her affection to his sword hilt. Her mammy came hurry- 
ing. “Ef I des’ tuhn my haid, sumpin’ bound ter happen, ’n’ happen 
dat minute! Dar now! You ain’ hut er mite, honey, ’n’ you’s still 
got de goober fer de squirl. Come mek yo’ manners to de gineral!” 

Released, the two went on. “Have you seen Edward ?” 

“Yes. Three days ago— pagan, insouciant, and happy! The 
men adore him. Fauquier is here to-day.” 

“Oh! —I have not seen him for so long —”’ 

“He will be at the President’s to-night. I think you had best go 
with me —” 

“Tf you think so, father —” 

“T know, dear child! — That poor brave boy in his cadet grey 
and white. — But Richard is a brave man — and their mother is 
heroic. It is of the living we must think, and this cause of ours. Weare 
on the eve of something terrible, Judith. When Jackson comes 
General Lee will have eighty-five thousand men. Without rein- 
forcements, with McDowell still away, McClellan must number an 
hundred and ten thousand. North and South, we are going to 
grapple, in swamp, and poisoned field, and dark forest. We are 
gladiators stripped, and which will conquer the gods alone can tell! 
But we ourselves can tell that we are determined — that each side 
is determined — and that the grapple will be of giants. Well! to- 
night, I think the officers who chance to be in town will go to the 
President’s House with these thoughts in mind. To-morrow we 
return to the lines; and a great battle chant will be written before 
we tread these streets again. For us it may be a pean or it may bea 
dirge, and only the gods know which! We salute our flag to-night — 
the government that may last as lasted Greece or Rome, or the 
government which may perish, not two years old! I think that 
General Lee will be there for a short time. It is something like a 
recognition of the moment — a libation; and whether to life or to 
death, to an oak that shall live a thousand years or to a dead child 
among nations, there is not one living soul that knows!” 

“T will go, father, of course. Will you come for me?” 


418 THE LONG ROLL 


“T or Fauquier. I am going to leave you here, at the gates. There 
is something I wish to see the governor about, at the mansion.”’ 

He kissed her and let her go; stood watching her out of the square 
and across the street, then with a sigh turned away to the mansion. 
Judith, now on the pavement by St. Paul’s, hesitated a moment. 
There was an afternoon service. Women whom she knew, and 
women whom she did not know, were going in, silent, or speaking 
each to each in subdued voices. Men, too, were entering, though 
not many. A few were in uniform; others as they came from the 
Capitol or from office or department. Judith, too, mounted the 
steps. She was very tired, and her religion was an out-of-door one, 
but there came upon her a craving for the quiet within St. Paul’s 
and for the beautiful, old, sonorous words. She entered, found a 
shadowy pew beneath the gallery, and knelt a moment. As she rose 
another, having perhaps marked her as she entered, paused at the 
door of the pew. She saw who it was, put out a hand and drew her 
in. Margaret Cleave, in her black dress, smiled, touched the younger 
woman’s forehead with her lips, and sat beside her. The church was 
not half filled; there were no people very near them, and when pre- 
sently there was singing, the sweet, old-world lines beat distantly 
on the shores of their consciousness. They sat hand in hand, each 
thinking of battlefields; the one with a constant vision of Port 
Republic, the other of some to-morrow’s vast, melancholy, smoke- 
laden plain. 

As was not infrequently the case in the afternoon, an army chap- 
lain read the service. One stood now before the lectern. ‘“ Mr. 
Corbin Wood,” whispered Judith. Margaret nodded. “I know. We 
nursed him last winter in Winchester. He came to see me yester- 
day. He knew about Will. He told me little things about him — 
dear things! It seems they were together in an ambulance on the 
Romney march.”’ 

Her whisper died. She sat pale and smiling, her beautiful hands 
lightly folded in her lap. For all the years between them, she was 
in many ways no older than Judith herself. Sometimes the latter 
called her “Cousin Margaret,’’ sometimes simply “ Margaret.”’ 
Corbin Wood read in a mellow voice that made the words a part of 
the late sunlight, slanting in the windows. He raised his arm in 
an occasional gesture, and the sunbeams showed the grey uniform 


- AT THE PRESIDENT’S 419 


beneath the robe, and made the bright buttons brighter. Thou 
turnest man to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For 
a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and 
as a watch in the night. 

The hour passed, and men and women left St. Paul’s. The two 
beneath the gallery waited until well-nigh all were gone, then they 
themselves passed into the sunset street. ‘“‘I will walk home with 
you,” said Judith. “ How is Miriam ?”’ 

“She is beginning to learn,” answered the other; “‘just beginning, 
poor, darling child! It is fearful to be young, and to meet the be- 
ginning! But she is rousing herself — she will be brave at last.” 

Judith softly took the hand beside her and lifted it to her lips. 
“T don’t see how your children could help being brave. You are well 
cared for where you are?” 

“Yes, indeed. Though if my old friend had not taken us in, I do 
not know what we should have done. The city is fearfully crowded.”’ 

“T walked from the hospital with father. He says that the battle 
will be very soon.” 

“T know. The cannon grow louder every night. I feel an assur- 
ance, too, that the army is coming from the Valley.” 

““Sometimes,” said Judith, “I say to myself, ‘This is a dream — 
all but one thing! Now it is time to wake up — only remembering 
that the one thing is true.’ But the dream goes on, and it gets 
heavier and more painful.”’ 

“Yes,” said Margaret. “But there are great flashes of light 
through it, Judith.” 

They were walking beneath linden trees, fragrant, and filled with 
murmurous sound. The street here was quiet; only a few passing 
people. As the two approached the corner there turned it a slight 
figure, a girl dressed in homespun with a blue sunbonnet. In her 
hands was a cheap carpet-bag, covered with roses and pansies. She 
looked tired and discouraged, and she set the carpet-bag down on 
the worn brick pavement and waited until the two ladies came near. 
“Please, could you tell me —”’ she began in a soft, drawling voice, 
which broke suddenly. ‘Oh, it’s Mrs. Cleave! it’s Mrs. Cleave! — 
Oh! oh!” 

“Christianna Maydew! — Why, Christianna!” 

Christianna was crying, though evidently they were joyful tears. 


4.20 THE LONG ROLL 


‘“‘T —]J was so frightened in this lonely place! — an’ — an’ Thun- 
der Run’s so far away — an’ — an’ Billy an’ Pap an’ Dave are n’t 
here, after all — an’ I never saw so many strange people — an’ then 
I saw you — oh! oh!” 

So brushed aside in this war city were all unnecessary conventions, 
that the three sat down quite naturally upon a wide church step. 
An old and wrinkled nurse, in a turban like a red tulip, made room 
for them, moving aside a perambulator holding a sleeping babe. 
“‘F’om de mountains, ain’ she, ma’am? She oughter stayed up dar 
close ter Hebben!”’ } 

Christianna dried her eyes. Her sunbonnet had fallen back. She 
looked like a wild rose dashed with dew. “‘I am such a fool to cry!” 
said Christianna. “I ought to be laughin’ an’ clappin’ my hands. 
I reckon I’m tired. Streets are so hard an’ straight, an’ there’s such 
a terrible number of houses.” 

“How did you come, Christianna, and when, and why?” 

“Tt was this a-way,” began Christianna, with the long mountain 
day before her. “It air so lonesome on Thunder Run, with Pap 
gone, an’ Dave gone, an’ Billy gone, an’—an’ Billy gone. An’ the 
one next to me, she’s grown up quick this year, an’ she helps mother 
alot. She planted,” said Christianna, with soft pride, ‘she planted 
the steep hillside with corn this spring — yes, Violetta did that!” 

“And so you thought —”’ 

‘““An’ Pap has — had —a cousin in Richmond. Nanny Pine is 
her name. An’ she used to live on Thunder Run, long ago, an’ she 
was n’t like the rest of the Maydews, but had lots of sense, an’ 
she up one mahnin’, mother says, an’ took her foot in her hand, 
an’ the people gave her lifts through the country, an’ she came to 
Richmond an’ learned millinery —”’ 

“Millinery!” 

““Yes’m. To put roses an’ ribbons on bonnets. An’ she married 
here, a man named Oak, an’ she wrote back to Thunder Run, to 
mother, a real pretty letter, an’ mother took it to Mr. Cole at the 
tollgate (it was long ago, before we children went to school) an’ 
Mr. Cole read it to her, an’ it said that she had now a shop of her 
own, an’ if ever any Thunder Run people came to Richmond to 
come right straight to her. An’ so—” 

“And you could n’t find her ?” 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 421 


‘An’ so, last week, I was spinning. An’ I walked up an’ down, an’ 
the sun was shining, clear and steady, an’ I could see out of the door, 
an’ there wasn’t a sound, an’ there wa’n’t anything moved. An’ it 
was as though God Almighty had made a ball of gold with green . 
trees on it and had thrown it away, away! higher than the moon, an’ 
had left it there with nothin’ on it but a dronin’, dronin’ wheel. An’ 
it was like the world was where the armies are. An’ it was like I had 
to get there somehow, an’ see Pap again an’ Dave an’ Billy an’ — an’ 
see Billy. There wa’n’t no help for it; it was like I had to go. An’ 
I stopped the wheel, an’ I said to mother, ‘I am going where the 
armies are.’ An’ she says to me, she says, ‘You don’t know where 
they are.’ An’ I says to her, I says, ‘I’ll find out.’ An’ I took my 
sunbonnet, an’ I went down the mountain to the tollgate and asked 
Mr. Cole. An’ he had a letter from — from Mr. Gold —” 

“Oh!” thought Margaret. “It is Allan Gold!” 

“‘ An’ he read it to me, an’ it said that not a man knew, but that 
he thought the army was goin’ to Richmond an’ that there would 
be terrible fightin’ if it did. An’ I went back up the mountain, 
an’ I said to mother, ‘ Violetta can do most as muchas I can now, an’ 
IT am goin’ to Richmond where the army’s goin’. I am goin’ to see 
Pap an’ Dave an’—an’ Billy, an’ I am goin’ to stay with Cousin 
Nanny Pine.’ An’ mother says, says she, ‘ Her name is Oak now, but I 
reckon youll know her house by the bonnets in the window.’ Mother 
was always like that,”’ said Christianna, again, with soft pride. “ Al- 
ways quick-minded! She sees the squirrel in the tree quicker’n any 
of us — ’ceptin’ it’s Billy. An’ she says, ‘How’re you goin’ to get 
thar, Christianna — less’n you walk ?’ An’ I says, “I’ll walk.’ ” 

“Oh, poor child!” cried Judith! “Did you?” 

“No, ma’am; only a real little part of the way. It’s a hundred 
and fifty miles, an’ we ain’t trained to march, an’ it would have taken 
me so long. No, ma’am. Mrs. Cole heard about my goin’ an’ she 
sent a boy to tell me to come see her, an’ I went, an’ she gave mea 
dollar (I surely am goin’ to pay it back, with interest) an’ a lot of 
advice, an’ she could n’t tell me how to find Pap an’ Dave an’ Billy, 
but she said a deal of people would know about Allan Gold, for he 
was a great scout, an’ she gave me messages for him; an’ anyhow 
the name of the regiment was the 65th, an’ the colonel was your 
son, ma’am, an’ he would find the others for me. An’ she got a man 


422 THE LONG ROLL 


to take me in his wagon, twenty miles toward Lynchburg, for 
nothin’. An’ I thanked him, an’ asked him to have some of the 
dinner mother an’ Violetta had put in a bundlefor me; but hesaid 
no, he was n’t hungry. An’ that night I slept at a farmhouse, an’ they 
would n’t take any pay. An’ the next day and the next I walked 
to Lynchburg, an’ there I took the train.” Her voice gathered 
firmness. ‘I had never seen one before, but I took it all right. I 
asked if it was goin’ to Richmond, an’ I climbed on. An’ a man came 
along an’ asked me for my ticket, an’ I said that I did n’t have one, 
but that I wanted to pay if it was n’t more than a dollar. An’ he 
asked me if it was a gold dollar or a Confederate dollar. An’ there 
were soldiers on the train, an’ one came up an’ took off his hat an’ 
asked me where I was goin’, an’ I told him an’ why, an’ he said it 
did n’t matter whether it was gold or Confederate, and that the 
conductor did n’t want it anyhow. An’ the conductor — that was 
what the first man was called — said he did n’t reckon I’d take up 
much room, an’ that the road was so dog-goned tired that one more 
could n’t make it any tireder, an’ the soldier made me sit down on 
one of the benches, an’ the train started.”’ She shut her eyes tightly. 
“T don’t like train travel. I like to go slower —”’ 

“But it brought you to Richmond —”’ 

Christianna opened her eyes. “ Yes, ma’am, we ran an’ ranall day, 
making a lot of noise, an’ it was so dirty; an’ then last night we got 
here — an’ I slept on a bench in the house where we got out — only 
I did n’t sleep much, for soldiers an’ men an’ women were going in 
and out all night long — an’ then in the mahnin’ a coloured woman 
there gave me a glass of milk an’ showed me where I could wash my 
face — an’ then I came out into the street an’ began to look for 
Cousin Nanny Pine —”’ 

“And you could n’t find her ?” 

“She is n’t here, ma’am. I walked all mahnin’, looking, but I 
could n’t find her, an’ nobody that I asked knew. An’ they all said 
that the army from the Valley had n’t come yet, an’ they did n’t 
even know if it was coming. An’ I was tired an’ frightened, an’ then 
at last Isaw a window with two bonnets in it, and I said, ‘Oh, thank 
the Lord!’ an’ I went an’ knocked. An’ it was n’t Cousin Nanny 
Pine. It was another milliner. ‘Mrs. Oak?’ shesays, says she. ‘Mrs. 
Oak’s in Williamsburg! Daniel Oak got his leg cut off in the battle, 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S | 423 


an’ she boarded up her windows an’ went to Williamsburg to nurse 
him —— an’ God knows I might as well board up mine, for there’s 
nothin’ doin’ in millinery!’ An’ she gave me my dinner, an’ she 
told me that the army had n’t come yet from the Valley, an’ she 
said she would let me stay there with her, only she had three cous- 
ins’ wives an’ their children, refugeein’ from Alexandria way an’ 
stayin’ with her, an’ there was n’t a morsel of room. An’ so I rested 
for an hour, an’ then I came out to look for some place to stay. An’ 
it’s mortal hard to find.” Her soft voice died. She wiped her eyes 
with the cape of her sunbonnet. 

‘‘She had best come with me,” said Margaret to Judith. “Yes, 
there is room — we will make room — and it will not be bad for 
Miriam to have some one. . . . Are we not all looking for that 
army? And her people are in Richard’s regiment.” She rose. 
“Christianna, child, neighbours must help one another out! So 
come with me, and we shall manage somehow!”’ 

Hospitality rode well forward in the Thunder Run creed. Chris- 
tianna accepted with simplicity what, had their places been changed, 
she would as simply have given. She began to look fair and happy, 
a wild rose in sunshine. She was in Richmond, and she had found 
a friend, and the army was surely coming! As the three rose from 
the church step, there passed a knot of mounted soldiers. It 
chanced to be the President’s staff, with several of Stuart’s cap- 
tains, and the plumage of these was yet bright. The Confederate 
uniform was a handsome one; these who wore it were young and 
handsome men. From spur to hat and plume they exercised a charm. 
Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing, and their noble, 
mettled horses pranced to the music. As they passed they raised 
their hats. One, who recognized Judith, swept his aside with a ges- 
ture appropriate to a minuet. With sword and spur, with horses 
stepping to music, by they went. Christianna looked after them 
with dazzled eyes. She drew a fluttering breath. “I did n’t know 
things like that were in the world!” 

A little later the three reached the gate of the house which shel- 
tered Margaret and Miriam. “I won’t go in,” said Judith. “It is 
growing late. ... Margaret, I am going to the President’s to- 
night. Father wishes me to go with him. He says that we are on 
the eve of a great battle, and that it is right —”’ 


424 THE LONG ROLL 


Margaret smiled upon her. “It zs right. Of course you must go, 
dear and darling child! Do not think that I shall ever misunder- 
stand you, Judith!” 

The other kissed her, clinging for a moment to her. “‘Oh, mother, 
mother! . . . I hear the cannon, too, louder and louder!” She 
broke away. “I must not cry to-night. To-night we must all have 
large bright eyes — like the women in Brussels when ‘There was 
revelry by night’ —Is n’t it fortunate that the heart doesn’t 
show?” 

The town was all soft dusk when she came to the kinsman’s 
house which had opened to her. Crowded though it was with 
refugee kindred, with soldier sons coming and going, it had man- 
aged to give her a small quiet niche, a little room, white-walled, 
white-curtained, in the very arms of a great old tulip tree. The win- 
dow opened to the east, and the view was obstructed only by the 
boughs of the tree. Beyond them, through leafy openings, night 
by night she watched a red glare on the eastern horizon — McClel- 
lan’s five-mile-distant camp-fires. Entering presently this room, 
she lit two candles, placed them on the dressing table, and pro- 
ceeded to make her toilette for the President’s House. 

Through the window came the sound of the restless city. It was 
like the beating of a distant sea, with a ground swell presaging 
storm. The wind, blowing from the south, brought, too, the voice 
of the river, passionate over its myriad rocks, around its thousand 
islets. here were odours of flowers; somewhere there was jasmine. 
White moths came in at the window, and Judith, rising, put glass 
candle-shades over the candles. She sat brushing her long hair; 
fevered with the city’s fever, she saw not herself in the glass, but 
all the stress that had been and the stress that was to be. Cleave’s 
latest letter had rested in the bosom of her dress; now the thin 
oblong of bluish paper lay before her on the dressing table. 
The river grew louder, the wind from the south stirred the masses 
of her hair, the jasmine odour deepened. She bent forward, spread- 
ing her white arms over the dark and smooth mahogany, drooped 
her head upon them, rested lip and cheek against the paper. The 
sound of the warrior city, the river and the wind, beat out a rhythm 
in the white-walled room. Love — Death! Love — Death! Dear 
Love — Dark Death — Eternal Love — She rose, laid the letter with 





AT THE PRESIDENT’S 426 


others from him in an old sandalwood box, coiled her hair and 
quickly dressed. A little later, descending, she found awaiting her, 
in the old, formal, quaint parlour, Fauquier Cary. 

The two met with warm affection. Younger by much than was 
the master of Greenwood, he was to the latter’s children like one of 
their own generation, an elder brother only. He held her from him 
and looked at her. “ You are a lovely woman, Judith! Did it run 
the blockade ?” 

Judith laughed: “ No! I wear nothing that comes that way. It is 
an old dress, and it is fortunate that Easter darns so exquisitely!” 

“Warwick will meet us at the house. We both ride back before 
dawn. Why, I have not seen you since last summer!” 

“No. Just before Manassas!” 

They went out. “I should have brought a carriage for you. But 
they are hard to get —” 

“T would rather walk. It is not far. You look for the battle 
to-morrow?” 

“That depends, I imagine, on Jackson. Perhaps to-morrow, per- 
haps the next day. It will be bloody fighting when it comes — 
Heigho!”’ 

“The bricks of the pavement know that,”’ said Judith. “‘Some- 
times, Fauquier, you can see horror on the faces of these houses — 
just as plain! and at night I hear the river reading the bulletin!” 

“Poor child! — Yes, we make all nature apartner. Judith, Iwas 
glad to hear of Richard Cleave’s happiness — as glad as I was sur- 
prised. Why, I hardly know, and yet I had it firmly in mind that it 
was Maury Stafford —” 

Judith spoke in a pained voice. “I cannot imagine why so many 
people should have thought that. Yes, and Richard himself. It 
never was; and I know I am no coquette!” 

“No. You are not a coquette. Ideas like that arrive, one never 
knows how — like thistledown in the air— and suddenly they are 
planted and hard to uproot. Stafford himself breathed it some- 
how. That offends you, naturally; but I should say there was 
never a man more horribly in love! It was perhaps a fixed idea 
with him that he would win you, and others misread it. Well, I 
am sorry for him! But I like Richard best, and he will make you 
happier.” 


426 THE LONG ROLL 


He talked on, in his dry, attractive voice, moving beside her 
slender, wiry, resolute, trained muscle and nerve, from head to 
foot. ‘I was at the Officer’s Hospital this morning to see Carewe. 
He was wounded at Port Republic, and his son and an old servant 
got him here somehow. He was talking about Richard. He knew 
his father. He says he’ll be a brigadier the first vacancy, and that, 
if the war lasts, he won’t stop there. He’ll go very high. You know 
Carewe?— how he talks? ‘Yes, by God, sir, Dick Cleave’s son’s 
got the stuff in him! Always was a kind of dumb, heroic race. 
Lot of iron ore in that soil, some gold, too.’ Only needed the pro- 
spector, Big Public Interest, to come along. Should n’t wonder if 
he carved his name pretty high on the cliff.” — Now, Judith, I have 
stopped beneath this lamp just to see you look the transfigured 
lover — happier at praise of him than at garlands and garlands for 
yourself! — Hm! Drawn to the life. Now we’ll go on to the Presi- 
dent’s House.” 

The President’s House on Shockoe Hill was all alight, men and 
women entering between white pillars, from the long windows 
music floating. Beyond the magnolias and the garden the ground 
dropped suddenly. Far and wide, a vast horizon, there showed the 
eastern sky, and far and wide, below the summer stars, there flared 
along it a reddish light — the camp-fires of two armies, the grey the 
nearer, the blue beyond. Faint, faint, you could hear the bugles. It 
was a dark night; no moon, only the flicker of fireflies in magnolias 
and roses and the gush of light from the tall, white-pillared house. 
The violins within were playing ‘‘Trovatore.” Warwick Cary, an 
aide with him, came from the direction of the Capitol and joined 
his daughter and brother. The three entered together. 

There was little formality in these gatherings at the White House 
of the Confederacy. The times were too menacing, the city too 
conversant with alarm bells, sudden shattering bugle notes, thun- 
derclaps of cannon, men and women too close companions of great 
and stern presences, for the exhibition of much care for the minuter 
social embroidery. No necessary and fitting tracery was neglected, 
but life moved now in a very intense white light, so deep and in- 
tense that it drowned many things which in other days had had 
their place in the field of vision. There was an old butler at the 
President’s door, and a coloured maid hovered near to help with 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 427 


scarf or flounce if needed. In the hall were found two volunteer 
aides, young, handsome, gay, known to all, striking at once the note 
of welcome. Close within the drawing-room door stood a member 
of the President’s Staff, Colonel Ives, and beside him his wife, a 
young, graceful, and accomplished woman. These smilingly greeted 
the coming or said farewell to the parting guest. 

The large drawing-room was fitted for conversation. Damask- 
covered sofas with carved rosewood backs, flanked and faced by 
claw-foot chairs, were found in corners and along the walls; an 
adjoining room, not so brightly lit, afforded further harbourage, 
while without was the pillared portico, with roses and fireflies and 
a view of the flare upon the horizon. From some hidden nook the 
violins played Italian opera. On the mantles and on one or two 
tables, midsummer flowers bloomed in Parian vases. 

Scattered in groups, through the large room, were men in uniform 
and civilians in broadcloth and fine linen. So peculiarly consti- 
tuted were the Confederate armies that it was usual to find here a 
goodly number of private soldiers mingling with old schoolmates, 
friends, kindred wearing the bars and stars of lieutenants, captains, 
majors, colonels, and brigadiers. But to-night all privates and all 
company officers were with their regiments; there were not many 
even of field and staff. It was known to be the eve of a fight, a very 
great fight; passes into town were not easy to obtain. Those in 
uniform who were here counted; they were high in rank. Mingling 
with them were men of the civil government, — cabinet officers, 
senators, congressmen, judges, heads of bureaus ; and with these, 
men of other affairs: hardly a man but was formally serving the 
South. If he were not in the field he was of her legislatures; if not 
there, then doing his duty in some civil office; if not there, wrestling 
with the management of worn-out railways; or, cool and keen, con- 
cerned in blockade running, bringing in arms and ammunition, or 
in the Engineer Bureau, or the Bureau of Ordnance or the Medical 
Department, or in the service of the Post, or at the Treasury issuing 
beautiful Promises to Pay, or at the Tredegar moulding cannon, or 
in the newspaper offices wrestling with the problem of worn-out 
type and wondering where the next roll of paper was to come from, 
or in the telegraph service shaking his head over the latest raid, the 
latest cut wires; or he was experimenting with native medicinal 


428 THE LONG ROLL 


plants, with balloons, with explosives, torpedoes, submarine bat- 
teries; or thinking of probable nitre caves, of the possible gathering 
of copper from old distilleries, of the scraping saltpetre from cellars, 
of how to get tin, of how to get chlorate of potassium, of how to get 
gutta-percha, of how to get paper, of how to get salt for the country 
at large; or he was running sawmills, building tanneries, felling oak 
and gum for artillery carriages, working old iron furnaces, working 
lead mines, busy with foundry and powder mill. . . . If he was old 
he was enlisted in the City Guard, a member of the Ambulance 
Committee, a giver of his worldly substance. All the South was at 
work, and at work with a courage to which were added a certain 
colour and é/an not without value on her page of history. The men, 
not in uniform, here to-night were doing their part, and it was recog- 
_ nized that they were doing it. The women, no less; of whom there 
were a number at the President’s House this evening. With soft, 
Southern voices, with flowers banded in their hair, with bare throat 
and arms, with wide, filmy, effective all-things-but-new dresses, they 
moved through the rooms, or sat on the rosewood sofas, or walking 
on the portico above the roses looked out to the flare in the east. 
Some had come from the hospitals, — from the Officer’s, from Chim- 
borazo, Robinson’s, Gilland’s, the St. Charles, the Soldier’s Rest, 
the South Carolina, the Alabama, — some from the sewing-rooms, 
where they cut and sewed uniforms, shirts, and underclothing, 
scraped lint, rolled bandages; several from the Nitre and Mining 
Bureau, where they made gunpowder; several from the Arsenal, 
where they made cartridges and filled shells. These last would be 
refugee women, fleeing from the counties overrun by the enemy, 
all their worldly wealth swept away, bent on earning something 
for mother or father or child. One and all had come from work, and 
they were here now in the lights and flowers, not so much for their 
own pleasure as that there might be cheer, music, light, laughter, 
flowers, praise, and sweetness for the men who were going to battle. 
Men and women, all did not come or go at once; they passed in 
and out of the President’s House, some tarrying throughout the 
evening, others but fora moment. The violins left ‘Il Trovatore,”’ 
began upon “Les Huguenots.” 

The President stood between the windows, talking with a little 
group of men, — Judge Campbell, R. M.T. Hunter, Randolph the 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 429 


Secretary of War, General Wade Hampton, General Jeb Stuart. 
Very straight and tall, thin, with a clear-cut, clean-shaven, distin- 
guished face, with a look half military man, half student, with a 
demeanour to all of perfect if somewhat chilly courtesy, by tem- 
perament a theorist, able with the ability of the field marshal or the 
scholar in the study, not with that of the reader and master of men, 
the hardest of workers, devoted, honourable, single-minded, a 
figure on which a fierce light has beaten, a man not perfect, not 
always just, nor always wise, bound in the toils of his own person- 
ality, but yet an able man who suffered and gave all, believed in 
himself, and in his cause, and to the height of his power laboured 
for it day and night — Mr. Davis stood speaking of Indian affairs 
and of the defences of the Western waters. 

Warwick Cary, his daughter on his arm, spoke to the President’s 
wife, a comely, able woman, with a group about her of strangers 
whom she was putting at their ease, then moved with Judith to the 
windows. The President stepped a little forward to meet them. 
“Ah, General Cary, I wish you could bring with you a wind from 
the Blue Ridge this stifling night! We must make this good news 
from the Mississippi refresh us instead! I saw your troops on the 
Nine-Mile road to-day. They cheered me, but I felt like cheering 
them! Miss Cary, I have overheard six officers ask to-night if 
Miss Cary had yet come.” 

Warwick began to talk with Judge Campbell. Judith laughed. 
“Tt was not of me they were asking, Mr. President! There is Hetty 
Cary entering now, and behind her Constance, and there are your 
six officers! I'am but a leaf blown from the Blue Ridge.” 
~ “Gold leaf,” said Wade Hampton. 

The President used toward all women a stately deference. “I 
hope,’’ he said, “that, having come once to rest in this room, you 
will often let a good wind blow you here —’’ Other guests claimed 
his attention. ‘Ah, Mrs. Stanard — Mrs. Enders — Ha, Wigfall! 
I saw your Texans this afternoon —’’ Judith found General Stuart 
beside her. “Miss Cary, a man of the Black Troop came back to 
camp yesterday. Says he, ‘They’ve got an angel in the Stonewall 
Hospital! She came from Albemarle, and her name is Judith. If I 
were Holofernes and a Judith like that wanted my head, by George, 
I’d cut it off myself to please her!’ — Yes, yes, my friend! — Miss 


430 THE LONG ROLL 


Cary, may I present my Chief of Staff, Major the Baron Heros von 
Borcke? Talk poetry with him, won’t you? — Ha, Fauquier! that 
was a pretty dash you made yesterday! Rather rash, I thought —”’ 

The other withered him with a look. “That was a carefully 
planned, cautiously executed manceuvre; modelled it after our old 
reconnoissance at Cerro Gordo. You to talk of rashness! — Here’s 
yea gah 6 Ole 

Judith, with her Prussian soldier of fortune, a man gentle, intelli- 
gent, and brave, crossed the room to one of the groups of men and 
women. Those of the former who were seated rose, and one of the 
latter put out an arm and claimed her with a caressing touch. ‘‘ You 
are late, child! Soam I. They brought in a bad case of fever, and I 
waited for the night nurse. Sit here with us! Mrs. Fitzgerald’s 
harp has been sent for and she is going to sing —”’ 

Judith greeted the circle. A gentleman pushed forward a chair. 
“Thank you, Mr. Soulé. My father and I stay but a little while, 
Mrs. Randolph, but it must be long enough to hear Mrs. Fitz- 
gerald sing — Yes, he is here, Colonel Gordon — there, speaking 
with Judge Campbell and General Hill. — How is the general to- 
day, Mrs. Johnston ?” 

“Better, dear, or I should not be here. I am here but for a mo- 
ment. He made me come — lying there on Church Hill, staring at 
that light in the sky! — Here is the harp.”’ 

Its entrance, borne by two servants, was noted. The violins were 
hushed, the groups turned, tended to merge one into another. A 
voice was heard speaking with a strong French accent — Colonel the 
Count Camille de Polignac, tall, gaunt, looking like a Knight of 
Malta — begging that the harp might be placed in the middle of the 
room. It was put there. Jeb Stuart led to it the lovely Louisianian. 
Mrs. Fitzgerald drew off her gloves and gave them to General 
Magruder to hold, relinquished her fan to Mr. Jules de Saint Martin, 
her bouquet to Mr. Francis Lawley of the London Times, and 
swept her white hand across the strings. She was a mistress of the 
harp, and she sang to it in a rich, throbbingly sweet voice, song after 
song as they were demanded. Conversation through the large room 
did not cease, but voices were lowered, and now and then came a 
complete lull in which all listened. She sang old Creole ditties and 
then Scotch and Irish ballads. 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 431 


Judith found beside her chair the Vice-President. “Ah, Miss 
Cary, when you are as old as I am, and have read as much, you will 
notice how emphatic is the testimony to song and dance and gaiety 
on the eve of events which are to change the world! The flower 
grows where in an hour the volcano will burst forth; the bird sings 
in the tree which the earthquake will presently uproot; the pearly 
shell gleams where will pass the tidal wave —’’ He looked around 
the room. “Beauty, zeal, love, devotion — and to-morrow the 
smoke will roll, the cannon thunder, and the brute emerge all the 
same — just as he always does — just as he always does — stamp- 
ing the flower into the mire, wringing the bird’s neck, crushing the 
shell! Well, well, let’s stop moralizing. What’s she singing now? 
Hm! ‘Kathleen Mavourneen.’ Ha, Benjamin! What’s the news 
with you?” 

Judith, turning a little aside, dreamily listened now to the singer, 
now to phrases of the Vice-President and the Secretary of State. 
“‘ After this, if we beat them now, a treaty surely. .. . Palmerston — 
The Emperour — The Queen of Spain — Mason says . . . Inefh- 
ciency of the blockade — Cotton obligations — Arms and muni- 
tions... .” Still talking, they moved away. A strident voice 
reached her from the end of the room — L. Q. C. Lamar, here to- 
night despite physicians. ‘‘The fight had to come. We are men, not 
women. The quarrel had lasted long enough. We hate each other, 
so the struggle had to come. Even Homer’s heroes, after they had 
stormed and scolded long enough, fought like brave men, long and 


well —”’ 
‘Ye banks and braes and streams around 
The castle o’ Montgomery — ” 


sang Mrs. Fitzgerald. 

There was in the room that slow movement which imperceptibly 
changes a well-filled stage, places a figure now here, now there, shifts 
the grouping and the lights. Now Judith was one of a knot of 
younger women. In the phraseology of the period, all were “‘ belles ”’; 
Hetty and Constance Cary, Mary Triplett, Turner MacFarland, 
Jenny Pegram, the three Fishers, Evelyn Cabell, and others. 
About them came the “ beaux,’’ — the younger officers who were here 
to-night, the aides, the unwedded legislators. Judith listened, talked, 
played her part. She had a personal success in Richmond. Her 


432 THE LONG ROLL 


name, her beauty, the at times quite divine expression of her face, 
made the eye follow, after which acertain greatness of mind was felt 
and the attention became riveted. The pictures moved again, Mrs. 
Fitzgerald singing “positively, this time, the last!’’ Some of the 
“belles,” attended by the “beaux,” drifted toward the portico, 
several toward the smaller room and its softly lowered lights. A 
very young man, an artillerist, tall and fair, lingered beside 
Judith. “‘Auld lang Syne!’ I do not think that she ought to sing 
that to-night! I have noticed that when you hear music just before 
battle the strain is apt to run persistently in your mind. She ought 
to sing us ‘Scots wha hae—’ ” 

A gentleman standing near laughed. ‘‘That’s good, or my name 
isn’t Ran Tucker! Mrs. Fitzgerald, Captain Pelham does not wish 
to be left in such ‘ a weavin’ way.’ He says that song is like an April 
shower on a bag of powder. The inference is that it will make the 
horse artillery chicken-hearted. I move that you give John Pelham 
and the assemblage ‘Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled’—” 

The singing ended, there was a wider movement through the 
room. Judith, with Pelham still beside her, walked on the portico, 
in the warm, rose-laden air. There was no moon, and the light in 
the east was very marked. “If we strike McClellan’s right,” said 
the artillerist, “all this hill and the ground to the north of it will be 
the place from which to watch the battle. If it lasts after nightfall, 
you will see the exploding shells beautifully.” They stood at the 
eastern end, Judith leaning against one of the pillars. Here a poet 
and editor of the Southern Literary Messenger joined them; with 
him a young man, a sculptor, Alexander Galt. A third, Washington 
the painter, came, too. The violins had begun again — Mozart now 
—“The Magic Flute.” ‘Oh, smell the roses!” said the poet. ‘‘To- 
night the roses, to-morrow the thorns— but roses, too, among the 
thorns, deep and sweet! There will still be roses, will there not, 
Miss Cary ?” 

“Yes, still,” said Judith. “If I could paint, Mr. Washington, I 
would take that gleam on the horizon.” 

“Yes, is it not fine? It is a subject, however, for a mystic. I have 
an idea myself for a picture, if I can get the tent-cloth to paint it 
on, and if some brushes and tubes I sent for ever get through the 
block.” 


AT THE PRESIDENT’S 433 


“Tf I had a tent I certainly would give it to you,” said Pelham. 
“What would you paint ?” 

‘“‘A thing that happened ten daysago. The burial of Latané. The 
women buried him, you know. At Summer Hill. — Mrs. Brocken- 
borough, and her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Somebody 
read me a letter about it— so simple it wrung your heart! ‘By God,’ 
I said, ‘what Roman things happen still!’ And I thought I’d like 
to paint the picture.” 

“T read the letter, too,”’ said the poet. “‘I am making some verses 
about it — see if you like them — 


“For woman’s voice, in accents soft and low, 
Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read 
O’er his hallowed dust the ritual for the dead: 


“““T is sown in weakness, it is raised in power’ — 
Softly the promise floated on the air, 
While the low breathings of the sunset hour 
Came back responsive to the mourner’s prayer. 
Gently they laid him underneath the sod 
And left him with his fame, his country and his God! ”’ 


“Yes,” said Judith, sweetly and gravely. “How can we but like 
them? And I hope that you will find the tent-cloth, Mr. Washing- 
ton.” 

Reéntering, presently, the large room, they found a vague stir, 
people beginning to say good-night, and yet lingering. “It is grow- 
ing late,’’ said some one, ‘“‘and yet I think that he will come.”’ Her 
father came up to her and drew her hand through his arm. “Here 
is General Lee now. We will wait a moment longer, then go.” 

They stood in the shadow of the curtains watching the Com- 
mander-in-Chief just pausing to greet such and such an one in his 
progress toward the President. An aide or two came behind; the 
grand head and form moved on, simple and kingly. Judith drew 
quicker breath. “Oh, he looks so great a man!”’ 

“He looks what he is,” said Warwick Cary. “ Now let us go, too, 
and say good-night.”’ 


CHAPTER XXX] 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 


day was parching, the sky hot blue steel, the wind that 

blew the dust through the streets like a breath from the 
sun himself. People went by, all kinds of people, lacking only 
soldiers. —There seemed no soldiers in town. Miriam, alternately 
listless and feverishly animated, explained matters to the mountain 
girl. ‘“When there’s to be a battle, every one goes to the colours. — 
Look at that old, old, old man, hobbling on his stick. You’d think 
that death was right beside him, would n’t you? — ready to tap 
him on the shoulder and say, ‘Fall, fall, old leaf!’ But it is n’t so; 
death is on the battlefield looking for young men. Listen to his 
stick — tap, tap, tap, tap, tap —” 

Christianna rose, looked at the clock, which was about to strike 
noon, left the room and returned with a glass of milk. “‘ Mrs. Cleave 
said you was to drink this — Yes, Miss Miriam, do! — There now! 
Don’t you want to lie down?”’ 

“No, no!”’ said Miriam. “I don’t want to do anything but sit 
here and watch. — Look at that old, old woman with the basket on 
her arm! I know what is in it — Things for her son; bread and a 
little meat and shirts she has been making him — There’s another 
helping her, as old as she is. I mean to die young.” 

The people went by like figures on a frieze come to life. The room 
in which the two girls sat was on the ground floor of a small, old- 
fashioned house. Outside the window was a tiny balcony, with a 
graceful ironwork railing, and heavy ropes and twists of wistaria 
shaded this and the window. The old brick sidewalk was almost 
immediately below. For the most part the people who passed went 
by silently, but when there was talking the two behind the wistaria 
could hear. A nurse girl with her chargescame by. ‘‘What’sa ’cisive 
battle, honey? Yo’d better ask yo’ pa that. Reckon it’s where won’t 
neither side let go. Why won’t they? Now you tell me an’ then I'l] 


M and Christianna sat at the window, watching. The 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 435 


tell you! All I knows is, they’re gwine have a turrible rumpus pre- 
sently,an’ yo’ masaid tek you to yo’ gran’ma kaze she gwine out ter 
git jes’ ez near the battle an’ yo’ pa ez she kin git!” Nurse and 
children passed, and there came by an elderly man, stout and 
amiable-looking. His face was pale, his eyes troubled; he took off 
his straw hat, and wiped his forehead with a large white handker- 
chief. Appearing from the opposite direction, a young man, a case 
of surgeon’s instruments in his hand, met him, and in passing said 
good-day. The elder stopped him a moment, on the hot brick pave- 
ment before the wistaria. “‘ Well, doctor, they ’re all out Mechanics- 
ville way! I reckon we may expect to hear the cannon any moment 
now. I saw you at Gilland’s, did n’t I, yesterday?” 

“Yes, I am there —”’ 

“Well, if by ill luck my boy is wounded and brought there, you’ll 
look out for him, eh? Youngest boy, you know— Blue eyes, 
brown hair. I’m on the Ambulance Committee. We’ve got a string 
of wagons ready on the Nine-Mile road. You look out for him if he’s 
brought in —” 

The surgeon promised and each went his way. Three women 
passed the window. One was knitting as she walked, one was in deep 
black, and a third, a girl, carried a great silver pitcher filled with 
iced drink for some near-by convalescent. Two men came next. 
A negro followed, bearing a spade. One of the two was in broad- 
cloth, with a high silk hat. “I told them,” he was saying, “better 
bury her this morning, poor little thing, before the fighting begins. 
She won’t mind, and it will be hard to arrange it then—” “Yes, 
yes,” said the second, “‘better so! Leave to-morrow for the Dead 
March from ‘ Saul.’” 

They passed. A church bell began to ring. Miriam moved rest- 
lessly. ‘Is not mother coming back? She ought to have let me go 
with her. I can’t knit any more, — the needles are red hot when I 
touch them, — but I can sew. I could help her. — If I knew which 
sewing-room she went to —”’ 

Christianna’s hand timidly caressed her. “Better stay here, Miss 
Miriam. I’m going to give you another glass of milk now, directly 
— There’s a soldier passing now.” 

It proved but a battered soldier — thin and hollow-eyed, arm in 
a sling, and a halt in his walk. He came on slowly, and he leaned for 


436 THE LONG ROLL 


rest against a sycamore at the edge of the pavement. Miriam bent 
out from the frame of wistaria. “‘Oh, soldier! don’t you want a glass 
of milk?” 

“Oh, soldier”? looked nothing loath. He came over to the little 
balcony, and Miriam took the glass from Christianna and, leaning 
over, gave it to him. ‘Oh, but that’s nectar!” hesaid, and drank it. 
“Ves — just out of hospital. Said I might go and snuff the battle 
from afar. Needed my pallet for some other poor devil. Glad I’m 
through with it, and sorry he is n’t! — Yes, I’ve got some friends 
down the street. Going there now and get out of this sun. Reckon 
the battle’ll begin presently. Hope the Accomac Invincibles will 
give them hell — begging your pardon, I’m sure. That milk cer- 
tainly was good. Thank you, and good-bye, Hebe — two Hebes.”’ 
He wavered on down the street. Christianna looked after him criti- 
cally. “They ought n’t to let that thar man out so soon! Clay white, 
an’ thin as a bean pole, an’ calling things an’ people out of their 
names —”’ 

Men and women continued to pass, the church bell to ring, the 
hot wind to blow the dust, the sun to blaze down, the sycamore 
leaves to rustle. A negro boy brought a note. It was from Margaret 
Cleave. ‘Dearest: There is somuch to do. I will not come home to din- 
ner nor will Cousin Harriet neither. She says tell Sarindy to give you 
two just what you like best. Christianna must look after you. I will 
come when I can.” 

Sarindy gave them thin crisp toast, and a pitcher of cool milk, 
and a custard sweetened with brown sugar. Sarindy was excited. 
““Vaas, Lawd, dar’s sho’ gwine ter be doin’s this day! What you 
reckon, Miss Miriam? Dar’s er lady from South Callina stayin’ 
cross’t de street, ’n’ she’s got er maid what’s got de impidence ob 
sin! What you reckon dat yaller gal say ter me? She say dat South 
Callina does de most ob de fightin’ ’n’ de bes’ obit, too! She say Vir- 
ginia pretty good, but dat South Callina tek de cake. She say South 
Callina mek ’em runebery time! Yaas’m! ’n’I gits up ’n’ I meks her 
er curtsy, ’n’ I say ter her, ‘Dat’ser pretty way ter talk when you’re 
visitin’ in Virginia, ’n’ ef dat ’’s South Callina manners I’se glad I 
wuz born in Virginia!’ Yaas’m. ’N’ I curtsy agin, ’n’I say, ‘Ain’ 
nobody or nothin’ ever lay over Virginia fer fightin’ ’n’ never-will! 
"N’ ef Virginia don’ mek ’em run ebery time, South Callina need n’t 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 437 


hope ter!’ ’N’ I asks her how come she never hear ob Gineral Stone- 
wall Jackson? Yaas’m. ’N’ I curtsy ter her ebery time — lak dis! 
’N’ ain’ she never hear ob Gineral Lee? An’ I ain’ er doubtin’ dat 
Gineral Wade Hampton is a mighty fine man — ’deed I knows he is 
— but ain’ she never heard ob Gineral Johnston? ’N’ how erbout 
Gineral Stuart — Yaas’m! ’n’ the Black Troop, ’n’ the Crenshaw 
Battery, ’n’ the Purcell Battery. Yaas’m! ’n’ the Howitzers, ’n’ the 
Richmon’ Blues— Yaas’m! I sho’ did mek her shet her mouf!— 
Braggin’ ter er Virginia woman ob South Callina!” 

The two went back to the large room. The air was scorching. 
Miriam undressed, slipped her thin, girlish arms into a muslin 
sacque, and lay down. Christianna drew the blinds together, took a 
palm-leaf fan and sat beside her. “‘I’ll fan you, jest as easy,” she 
said, in her sweet, drawling voice. “ An’ I can’t truly sing, but I can 
croon. Don’t you want me to croon you ‘Shining River’ ?” 

Miriam lay with closed eyes. A fly buzzed in the darkened room. 
The fan went monotonously to and fro. Christianna crooned “‘Shin- 
ing River’ and then “Shady Grove.” Outside, on the brick pave- 
ment, the sound of feet went by in a slender stream. 


“Shady Grove! Shady Grove — 
Going to Church in Shady Grove —” 


The stream without grew wide and deep, then hurrying. Chris- 
tianna looked over her shoulder, then at Miriam. The latter’s long 
lashes lay on her cheek. Beneath them glistened a tear, but her 
slight, girlish bosom rose and fell regularly. Christianna crooned on, 


“Shady Grove! Shady Grove — 
Children love my Shady Grove —” 


Boom! Boom!— Boom, Boom! Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom! 

Miriam started up with a cry. Outside the window a hoarse and 
loud voice called to some one across the street. “That’s beyond 
Meadow Bridge! D’ ye know what I believe? I believe it’s Stone- 
wall Jackson!” The name came back like an echo from the oppo- 
site pavement. “Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! He thinks 
maybe it’s Stonewall Jackson!” 

Boom — Boom — Boom — Boom, Boom! 

Miriam rose, threw off the muslin sacque and began to dress. Her 


438 THE LONG ROLL 


eyes were narrowed, her fingers rapid and steady. Christianna 
opened the window-blinds. The sound of the hurrying feet came 
strongly in, and with it voices. “The top of the Capitol! — see best 
from there —I think the hills toward the almshouse — Can you 
get out on the Brook turnpike? — No; it is picketed — The hill 
by the President’s House — try it!” Christianna, turning, found 
Miriam taking a hat from the closet shelf. “Oh, Miss Miriam, you 
must nt co-— 

Miriam, a changed creature, steady and sure as a fine rapier, 
turned upon her. “Yes, I am going, Christianna. If you like, you 
may come with me. Yes, Jam well enough. — No, mother would n’t 
keep me back. She would understand. If I lay there and listened, I 
should go mad. Get your bonnet and come.” 

The cannon shook the air. Christianna got her sunbonnet and 
tied the strings with trembling fingers. All the wild rose had fled 
from her cheeks, her lips looked pinched, her eyes large and startled. 
Miriam glanced her way, then came and kissed her. “I forget it was 
your first battle. I got used to them in Winchester. Don’t be 
afraid.” 

They went out into the hot sunshine. By now the greater part of 
the stream had hurried by. They saw that it flowed eastward, and 
they followed. The sun blazed down, the pavement burned their 
feet. The mountain girl walked like a piece of thistledown; Miriam, 
light and quick in all her actions, moved beside her almost as easily. 
It was as though the hot wind, rushing down the street behind them, 
carried them on with the dust and loosened leaves. There were 
other women, with children clinging to their hands. One or two had 
babes in their arms. There were old men, too, and several cripples. 
The lighter-limbed and unencumbered were blown ahead. The 
dull sound rocked the air. This was a residence portion of the city, 
and the houses looked lifeless. The doors were wide, the inmates 
gone. Only where there was illness, were there faces at the window, 
looking out, pale and anxious, asking questions of the hurrying pale 
and anxious folk below. The cannonading was not yet continuous. 
It spoke rather in sullen thunders, with spaces between in which 
the. heart began to grow quiet. Then it thundered again, and the 
heart beat to suffocation. 

The wind blew Miriam and Christianna toward the President’s 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 439 


House. Tall, austere, white-pillared, it stood a little coldly in the 
heat. Before the door were five saddle horses, with a groom or two. 
The staff came from the house, then the President in grey Confed- 
erate cloth and soft hat. He spoke to one of the officers in his clear, 
incisive voice, then mounted his grey Arab. A child waved to him 
from an upper window. He waved back, lifted his hat to the two 
girls as they passed, then, his staff behind him, rode rapidly off 
toward the sound of the firing. 

Miriam and Christianna, turning a little northward, found them- 
selves on a hillside thronged with people. It was like a section of an 
amphitheatre, and it commanded a great stretch of lowland broken 
here and there by slight elevations. Much of the plain was in forest, 
but in some places the waist-deep corn was waving, and in others the 
wheat stood in shocks. There were marshes and boggy green mead- 
ows and old fields of pine and broom sedge. Several roads could be 
seen. They all ran into a long and low cloud of smoke. It veiled the 
northern horizon, and out of it came the thunder. First appeared 
dull orange flashes, then, above the low-lying thickness, the small 
- white expanding cloud made by the bursting shell, then to the ear 
rushed the thunder. On the plain, from the defences which rimmed 
the city northward to the battle cloud, numbers of grey troops were 
visible, some motionless, some marching. They looked like toy 
soldiers. The sun heightened red splashes that were known to be 
battle-flags. Horsemen could be seen galboping from point to point. 
In the intervals between the thunders the hillside heard the tap 
of drum and the bugles blowing. The moving soldiers were going 
toward the cloud. 

Miriam and Christianna sank down beneath a little tree. They 
were on a facet of the hill not quite so advantageous as others. The 
crowded slopes were beyond. However, one could see the smoke 
cloud and hear the cannon, and that was all that could be done any- 
how. There were men and women about them, children, boys. The 
women were the most silent, — pale and silent; the men uttered low 
exclamations or soliloquies, or talked together. The boys were all 
but gleeful — save when they looked at the grown people, and then 
they tried for solemnity. Some of the children went to sleep. A 
mother nursed her babe. Near the foot of this hill, through a hol- 
low, there ran a branch,— Bacon Quarter Branch. Here, in the seven- 


440 THE LONG ROLL 


teenth century, had occurred an Indian massacre. The heavy, 
primeval woods had rung to the whoop of the savage, the groan of 
the settler, the scream of English woman and child. To-day the 
woods had been long cut, and the red man was gone. War remained 
— he had only changed his war paint and cry and weapons. 

Miriam clasped her thin brown hands about her knee, rested her 
chin on them, and fastened her great brown eyes on the distant 
battle cloud. Christianna, her sunbonnet pushed back, looked too, 
with limpid, awe-struck gaze. Were Pap and Dave and Billy fight- 
ing in that cloud? It was thicker than the morning mist in the hol- 
low below Thunder Run Mountain, and it was not fleecy, pure, and 
white. It was yellowish, fierce, and ugly, and the sound that came 
from it made her heart beat thick and hard. Was he there — Was 
Allan Gold there in the cloud? She felt that she could not sit still; 
she wished to walk toward it. That being impossible, she began to 
make a little moaning sound. A woman in black, sitting on the grass 
near her, looked across. ‘‘Don’t!” she said. “If you do that, all 
of us will do it. We’ve got to keep calm. If we let go, it would be 
like Rachel weeping. Try to be quiet.” 

Christianna, who had moaned as she crooned, hardly knowing it, 
at once fell silent. Another woman spoke to her. “Would you mind 
holding my baby? My head aches so. I must lie down here on the 
grass, Just a minute.”’ Christianna took the baby. She handled it 
skilfully, and it was preséntly cooing against her breast. Were 
Pap and Dave over there, shooting and cutting? And Billy — Billy 
with a gun now instead of the spear the blacksmith had made him? 
And Allan Gold was not teaching in the schoolhouse on Thunder 
PRs 2 

The woman took the baby back. The sun blazed down, there 
came a louder burst of sound. A man with a field-glass, standing 
near, uttered a “Tchk!” of despair. ‘Impenetrable curtain! The 
ancients managed things better — they did not fight in a fog!” 

He seemed a person having authority, and the people immediately 
about him appealed for information. He looked through the glass 
and gave it, and was good, too, about lending the glass. ‘It’s A. P. 
Hill, I’m sure — with Longstreet to support him. It’s A. P. Hill’s 
brigades that are moving into the smoke. Most of that firing is from 
our batteries along the Chickahominy. We are going undoubtedly 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 441 


to cross to the north bank — Yes. McClellan’s right wing — Fitz 
John Porter — A good soldier — Oh, he’ll have about twenty-five 
thousand men.” 

A boy, breathing excitement from top to toe, sent up a shrill voice. 
“Ts n’t Jackson coming, sir? Are n’t they looking for Jackson?” 

The soldier who had drunk the milk was discovered by Miriam 
and Christianna, near their tree. He gave his voice. “Surely! 
He’ll have come down from Ashland and A. P. Hill is crossing here. 
That’s an army north, and a big lot of troops south, and Fitz John 
Porter is between like a nut in a nut cracker. The cracker has only 
to work all right, and crush goes the filbert!”? He raised himself 
and peered under puckered brows at the smoke-draped horizon. 
“Yes, he’s surely over there — Stonewall. — Going to flank Fitz 
John Porter — Then we’ll hear a hell of a fuss.” 

“There’s a battery galloping to the front,” said the man with the 
glass. ‘Look, one of you! Wipe the glass; it gets misty. If it’s the 
Purcell, I’ve got two sons —” 

The soldier took the glass, turning it deftly with one hand. “Yes, 
think it is the Purcell. Don’t you worry, sir! They’re all right. 
Artillerymen are hard to kill— That’s Pender’s brigade going 
now —” 

Christianna clutched Miriam. ‘Look! look! Oh, what is it ?” 

It soared into the blue, above the smoke. The sunlight struck it 
and it became a beautiful iridescent bubble, large as the moon. 
“Oh, oh!” cried the boy. “Look at the balloon!” 

The hillside kept silence for a moment while it gazed, then — “Is 
it ours? — No; it is theirs! — It is going up from the hill behind 
Beaver Dam Creek. — Oh, it is lovely! — Lovely! No, no, it is hor- 
rible! — Look, look! there is another!”’ 

A young man, a mechanic, with sleeves rolled up, began to expa- 
tiate on “ours.” “We haven’t got but one — it was made in Savan- 
nah by Dr. Langon Cheves. Maybe they’ll send it up to-day, 
maybe not. I’ve seen it. It’s like Joseph’s coat in the Bible. They 
say the ladies gave their silk dresses for it. Here’ll be a strip of 
purple and here one of white with roses on it, and here it is black, 
and here it is yellow as gold. They melted rubber car-springs in 
naphtha and varnished it with that, and they’re going to fill it with 
city gas at the gas works —”’ 


442 THE LONG ROLL 


The bubbles floated in the clear air, above and beyond the zone 
of smoke. It was now between four and five in the afternoon. The 
slant rays of the sun struck them and turned them mother-of-pearl. 
An old man lifted a dry, thin voice like a grasshopper’s. ‘Once J 
went to Niagara, and there was a balloon ascension. Everybody 
held their breath when the fellow went up, and he got into some 
trouble, I don’t remember just what it was, and we almost died of 
anxiety until he came down; and when he landed we almost cried 
we were so glad, and we patted him on the back and hurrahed — 
and he was a Yankee, too! And now it’s war time, and there’s 
nothing I’d like better than to empty a revolver into that fine wind- 
bag!” 

The sound in the air became heavier. A man on horseback 
spurred along the base of the hill. The people nearest stopped him. 
“Tell you? I can’t tell you! Nobody ever knows anything about a 
battle till it’s over, and not much then. Is Jackson over there? I 
don’t know. He ought to be, so I reckon he is! If he is n’t, it’s A. P. 
Hill’s battle, all alone.” 

He was gone. “I don’t believe it’s much more than long-range 
firing yet,” said the soldier. ‘Our batteries on the Chickahominy — 
and they are answering from somewhere beyond Beaver Dam Creek. 
No musketry. Hello! The tune’s changing!”’ 

It changed with such violence that after a moment’s exclamation 
the people sat or stood in silence, pale and awed. Speculation 
ceased. The plunging torrent of sound whelmed the mind and stilled 
the tongue. The soldier held out a moment. “Close range now. 
The North’s always going to beat us when it comes to metal sol- 
diers. I wonder how many they’ve got over there, anyhow!” Then 
he, too, fell silent. 

The deep and heavy booming shook air and earth. It came no 
longer in distinct shocks but with a continuous roar. The smoke 
screen grew denser and taller, mounting toward the balloons. There 
was no seeing for that curtain; it could only be noted that bodies of 
grey troops moved toward it, went behind it. A thin, elderly man, 
a school-teacher, borrowed the glass, fixed it, but could see nothing. 
He gave it back with a shake of the head, sat down again on the 
parched grass, and veiled his eyes with his hand. “‘‘Hell is murky,’ ”’ 
he said. 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 443. 


No lull occurred in the firing. The sun as it sank reddened the 
battle cloud that by now had blotted out the balloons. ‘‘ When it is. 
dark,” said the soldier, ‘‘it will be like fireworks.”’ An hour later the 
man with the glass discovered a string of wagons on one of the roads. 
It was coming citywards. “Ambulances!” he said, in a shaking 
voice. 

“Ambulances — ambulances —”’ The word went through the 
crowd like a sigh. It broke the spell. Most on the hillside might have 
an interest there. Parents, wives, brothers, sisters, children, they 
rose, they went away in the twilight like blown leaves. The air was 
rocking; orange and red lights began to show as the shells exploded. 
Christianna put her hand on Miriam’s. ‘Miss Miriam — Miss. 
Miriam! Mrs. Cleave ’ll say I did n’t take care of you. Let’s go — 
let’s go. They’re bringing back the wounded. Pap might be there or 
Dave or Billy or — Miss Miriam, Miss Miriam, your brother might 
be there.”’ 

The long June dusk melted into night, and still the city shook to 
the furious cannonading. With the dark it saw, as it had not seen in 
the sunshine. As the soldier said, it was like fireworks. 

Beginning at twilight, the wagons with the wounded came all night 
long. Ambulances, farm wagons, carts, family carriages, heavy- 
laden, they rumbled over the cobblestones with the sound of the 
tumbrels in the Terror. It wasstated that a number of the wounded 
were in the field hospitals. In the morning the knowledge was general 
that very many had lain, crying for water, all night in the slashing 
before Beaver Dam Creek. 

All the houses in Richmond were lighted. Through the streets 
poured a tide of fevered life. News — News — News! — demanded 
from chance couriers, from civilian spectators of the battle arriving 
pale and exhausted, from the drivers of wagon, cart, and carriage, 
from the less badly wounded — ‘‘Ours the victory — is it not? is 
it not? — Who led? — who fought? — who is fighting now? Jack- 
son came? Jackson certainly came? Weare winning —are we not? 
are we not?” Suspense hung palpable in the hot summer night, sus- 
pense, exaltation, fever. It breathed in the hot wind, it flickered 
in the lights, it sounded in the voice of the river. For many there 
sounded woe as well — woe and wailing for the dead. For others, 
for many, many others, there was a misery of searching, a heart- 


444 THE LONG ROLL 


breaking going from hospital to hospital. ‘Is he here? — Are they 
here?”’ The cannon stopped at nine o’clock. 

The Stonewall Hospital was poorly lighted. In ward number 23 
the oil lamps, stuck in brackets along the walls, smoked. At one 
end, where two pine tables were placed, the air from the open win- 
dow blew the flames distractingly. A surgeon, half dead with 
fatigue, strained well-nigh to the point of tears, exclaimed upon it. 
“That damned wind! Shut the window, Miss Cary. Yes, tight! 
It’s hell anyhow, and that’s what you do in hell — burn up!” 

Judith closed the window. As she did so she looked once at the 
light on the northern horizon. The firing shook the window-pane. 
The flame of the lamp now stood straight. She turned the wick 
higher, then lifted a pitcher and poured water into a basin, and when 
the surgeon had washed his hands took away the reddened stuff. 
Two negroes laid a man on the table — a gaunt North Carolinian, 
his hand clutching a shirt all stiffened blood. Between his eyelids 
showed a gleam of white, his breath came with a whistling sound. 
Judith bent the rigid fingers open, drew the hand aside, and cut 
away the shirt. The surgeon looked. “‘Humph! Well, a body can 
but try. Now, my man, you lie right still, and I won’t hurt you 
much. Come this side, Miss Cary — No, wait a moment! — It’s 
no use. He’s dying.” 

The North Carolinian died. The negroes lifted him from the 
table and put another in his place. “Amputation,” said the sur- 
geon. “Hold it firmly, Miss Cary; just there.’’ He turned to the 
adjoining table where a younger man was sewing up a forearm, 
ripped from wrist to elbow by a piece of shell. “‘Lend me your saw, 
will you, Martin? — Yes, I know the heat’s fearful! but I can’t 
work by a lamp that has Saint Vitus!’’ He turned back to his table. 
“Now, my lad, you just clench your teeth. Miss Cary and IJ are n’t 
going to hurt you any more than we can help. Yes, above the knee.” 
The younger surgeon, having finished the cut, wiped away with a 
towel the sweat that blinded him. “The next.— Hm! Doctor, will 
you look here a moment? — Oh, I see you can’t! It’s no use, Mrs. 
Opie. Better have him taken back. He’ll die in an hour. — The 
HeExt.” 

The ward was long, low ceiled, with brown walls and rafters. 
Between the patches of lamplight the shadows lay wide and heavy. 


THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN DAYS 445 


The cots, the pallets, the pew cushions sewed together, were placed 
each close by each. A narrow aisle ran between the rows; by each 
low bed there was just standing room. The beds were all filled, and 
the wagons bringing more rumbled on the cobblestones without. 
All the long place was reekingly hot, with a strong smell of human 
effluvia, of sweat-dampened clothing, of blood and powder grime. 
There was not much crying aloud; only when a man was brought 
in raving, or when there came a sharp scream from some form 
under the surgeon’s knife. But the place seemed one groan, a sound 
that swelled or sank, but never ceased. The shadows on the wall, 
fantastically dancing, mocked this with nods and becks and waving 
arms, — mocked the groaning, mocked the heat, mocked the smell, 
mocked the thirst, mocked nausea, agony, delirium, and the rattle 
in the throat, mocked the helpers and the helped, mocked the night 
and the world and the dying and the dead. At dawn the cannon 
began again. 


CHAPTER. AX XI 


GAINES’S MILL 


slowly turning to chill ethereal meads of violets, the violet 

more slowly yet giving place to Adonis gardens of rose and 
daffodil. The forests stood dew-drenched and shadowy, solemn 
enough, deep and tangled woodlands that they were, under the 
mysterious light, in the realm of the hour whose finger is at her lips. 
The dawn made them seem still, and yet they were not still. They 
and the old fields and the marshes and the wild and tangled banks 
of sluggish water-courses, and the narrow, hidden roads, and the low 
pine-covered hilltops, and all the vast, overgrown, and sombre low- 
land were filled with the breathing of two armies. In the cold glory 
of the dawn there faced each other one hundred and eighty thousand 
men bent on mutual destruction. 

A body of grey troops, marching toward Cold Harbour, was 
brought to a halt within a taller, deeper belt than usual. Oak and 
sycamore, pine and elm, beech, ash, birch and walnut, all towered 
toward the violet meads. A light mist garlanded their tops, and a 
graceful, close-set underbrush pressed against their immemorial 
trunks. It was dank and still, dim and solemn within such a forest 
cavern. Minutes passed. The men sat down on the wet, black 
eatth. The officers questioned knew only that Fitz John Porter was 
falling back from Beaver Dam Creek, presumably on his next line 
of intrenchments, and that, presumably, we were following. “Has 
Jackson joined?” “Can’t tell you that. If he has n’t, well, we’ll 
beat them anyhow!”’ 

This body of troops had done hard fighting the evening before 
and was tired enough to rest. Some of the men lay down, pillowing 
their heads on their arms, dozing, dozing in the underbrush, in the 
misty light, beneath the tall treetops where the birds were cheeping. 
In the mean timea Federal balloon, mounting into the amethyst air, 
discovered that this stretch of woodland was thronged with grey 


pr broke cold and pure, the melancholy ashen seas slowly, 


GAINES’S MILL 447 


soldiers, and signalled as much to Fitz John Porter, falling back with 
steadiness to his second line at Gaines’s Mill. He posted several bat- 
teries, and ordered them to shell the wood. 

In the purple light the guns began. The men in grey had to take 
the storm; they were in the wood and orders had not come to leave 
it. They took it in various ways, some sullenly, some contemptu- 
ously, some with nervous twitchings of head and body, many with 
dry humour and a quizzical front. The Confederate soldier was 
fast developing a characteristic which stayed with him to the end. 
He joked with death and gave a careless hand to suffering. A few 
of the more imaginative and esthetically minded lost themselves in 
open-mouthed contemplation of the bestormed forest and its be- 
haviour. 

The cannonade was furious, and though not many of the grey 
soldiers suffered, the grey trees did. Great and small branches were 
lopped off. In the dim light they came tumbling down. They were 
borne sideways, tearing through the groves and coverts, or, caught 
by an exploding shell and torn twig from twig, they fell in a shower 
of slivers, or, chopped clean from the trunk, down they crashed 
from leafy level to level till they reached the forest floor. Beneath 
them rose shouts of warning, came a scattering of grey mortals. 
Younger trees were cut short off. Their woodland race was run; 
down they rushed with their festoons of vines, crushing the under- 
growth of laurel and hazel. Other shells struck the red brown 
resinous bodies of pines, set loose dangerous mists of bark and 
splinter. As by a whirlwind the air was filled with torn and flying 
growth, with the dull crash and leafy fall of the forest non-combat- 
ants. The light was no longer pure; it was murky here as elsewhere. 
The violet fields and the vermeil gardens were blotted out, and in 
the shrieking of the shells the birds could not have been heard to sing 
even were they there. They were not there; they were all flown far 
away. It was dark in the wood, dark and full of sound and of mov- 
ing bodies charged with danger. The whirlwind swept it, the tree- 
tops snapped off. ‘‘ Attention!” The grey soldiers were glad to hear 
the word. “Forward! March!” They were blithe to hear the order 
and to leave the wood. 

They moved out into old fields, grown with sedge and sassafras, 
here and there dwarf pines. Apparently the cannon had lost them; 


448 | THE LONG ROLL 


at any rate for a time the firing ceased. The east was now pink, the 
air here very pure and cool and still, each feather of broom sedge 
holding its row of diamond dewdrops. The earth was much cut up. 
“‘Batteries been along here,”’ said the men. ‘Ours, too. Know the 
wheel marks. Hello! What you got, Carter?” 

““Somebody’s dropped his photograph album.” 

The man in front and the man behind and the man on the other 
side all looked. ‘One of those folding things! Pretty children! 
one, two, three, four, and their mother. — Keep it for him, Henry. 
Think the Crenshaw battery, or Braxton’s, or the King William, 
or the Dixie was over this way.” 

Beyond the poisoned field were more woods, dipping to one of the 
innumerable sluggish creeks of the region. There was a bridge — 
weak and shaken, but still a bridge. This crossed at last, the troops 
climbed a slippery bank, beneath a wild tangle of shrub and vine, and 
came suddenly into view of a line of breastworks, three hundred 
yards away. There was a halt; skirmishers were thrown forward. 
These returned without a trigger having been pulled. “Deserted, 
sir. They’ve fallen back, guns and all. But there’s a meadow be- 
tween us and the earthworks, sir, that — that — that —”’ 

The column began to move across the meadow — not a wide 
meadow, a little green, boggy place commanded by the breastworks. 
Apparently grey troops had made a charge here, the evening before. 
The trees that fringed the small, irregular oval, and the great birds 
that sat in the trees, and the column whose coming had made the 
birds to rise, looked upon a meadow set as thick with dead men as it 
should have been with daisies. They lay thick, thick, two hundred 
and fifty of them, perhaps, heart pierced, temple pierced by minie 
balls, or all the body shockingly torn by grape and canister. The 
wounded had been taken away. Only the dead were here, watched 
by the great birds, the treetops and the dawn. They lay fantasti- 
cally, some rounded into a ball, some spread eagle, some with their 
arms over their eyes, some in the posture of easy sleep. At one side 
was a swampy place, and on the edge of this a man, sunk to the 
thigh, kept upright. The living men thought him living, too. More 
than one started out of line toward him, but then they saw that half 
his head was blown away. 

They left the meadow and took a road that skirted another great 


GAINES’S MILL 449 


piece of forest. The sun came up, drank off the vagrant wreaths of 
mist and dried the dew from the sedge. There was promise of a hot, 
fierce, dazzling day. Another halt. ‘‘What’s the matter this time?”’ 
asked the men. ‘God! I want to march on — into something 
happening!”? Rumour came back. ‘Woods in front of us full of 
something. Don’t know yet whether it’s buzzards or Yankees. Get 
ready to open fire, anyway.” All ready, the men waited until she 
came again. “It’s men, anyhow. Woods just full of bayonets 
gleaming. Better throw your muskets forward.” 

The column moved on, but cautiously, with a strong feeling that 
it, in its turn, was being watched — with muskets thrown forward. 
Then suddenly came recognition. “Grey — grey! — See the flag! 
They’re ours! See —” Rumour broke into jubilant shouting. ‘‘It’s 
the head of Jackson’s column! It’s the Valley men! Hurrah! Hur- 
rah! Stonewall! Stonewall Jackson! Yaaaih! Yaaaaaihhhh! — 
‘Hello, boys! You’ve been doing pretty well up there in the blessed 
old Valley!’ ‘ Hello, boys! If you don’t look out you’ll be getting 
your names in the papers!’ ‘Hello, boys! come to help us kill mos- 
quitoes? Have n’t got any quinine handy, have you ?’ ‘Hello, boys! 
Hello Kernstown, McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Harper’s 
Ferry, Cross Keys, Port Republic! Yaaaih! Yaaaaaihh!’ ‘Hello, 
you damned Cohees! Are you the foot cavalry?’ — 65th Virginia, 
Stonewall Brigade? Glad to see you, 65th! Welcome to these here 
parts. What made you late? We surely did hone for you yesterday 
evening. Oh, shucks! the best gun’ll miss fire once in a lifetime. 
Who’s your colonel? Richard Cleave? Oh, yes, I remember! read 
his name in the reports. We’ve got a good one, too, — real proud 
of him. Well, we surely are glad to see you fellows in the flesh! — 
Oh, we’re going to halt. You halted, too? — Regular love feast, by 
jiminy! Got any tobacco?”’ 

A particularly ragged private, having gained permission from his 
officer, came up to the sycamore beneath which his own colonel and 
the colonel of the 65th were exchanging courtesies. The former 
glanced his way. “‘Oh, Cary! Oh, yes, you two are kin — I remem- 
ber. Well, colonel, I’m waiting for orders, as you are. Morally sure 
we’re in for an awful scrap. Got a real respect for Fitz John Porter. 
McClellan’s got this army trained, too, till it isn’t any more like 
the rabble at Manassas than a grub’s like a butterfly! Mighty fine 


450 THE LONG ROLL 


fighting machine now. Fitz John’s got our old friend Sykes and the 
Regulars. That doesn’t mean what it did at Manassas — eh? 
We’re all Regulars now, ourselves. — Yes, Cold Harbour, I reckon, 
or maybe a little this way — Gaines’s Mill. That’s their second line. 
Wonderful breastworks. Mac’s a master engineer! — Now I’ll 
clear out and let you and Cary talk.” 

The two cousins sat down on the grass beneath the sycamore. 
For a little they eyed each other in silence. Edward Cary was more 
beautiful than ever, and apparently happy, though one of his shoes 
was nothing more than a sandal, and he was innocent of a collar, 
and his sleeve demanded a patch. He was thin, bright-eyed, and 
bronzed, and he handled his rifle with lazy expertness, and he looked 
at his cousin with a genuine respect and liking. ‘‘ Richard, I heard 
about Will. I know you were like a father to the boy. I am very 
sorry.” 

“T know that you are, Edward. I would rather not talk about it, 
please. When the country bleeds, one must put away private grief.”’ 

He sat in the shade of the tree, thin and bronzed and bright-eyed 
like his cousin, though not ragged. Dundee grazed at hand, and 
scattered upon the edge of the wood, beneath the little dogwood 
trees, lay like acorns his men, fraternizing with the “Tuckahoe” 
regiment. ‘Your father and Fauquier —?”’ 

“Both somewhere in this No-man’s Land. What a wilderness of 
creeks and woods it is! I slept last night in a swamp, and at reveille 
a beautiful moccasin lay on a log and looked at me. I don’t think 
either father or Fauquier were engaged last evening. Pender and 
Ripley bore the brunt of it. Judith is in Richmond.” 

“Yes. I had a letter from her before we left the Valley.” 

“Tam glad, Richard, itis you. We were all strangely at sea, some- 
how — She is a noble woman. When I look at her I always feel 
reassured as to the meaning and goal of humanity.” 

“TI know — I love her dearly, dearly. If I outlive this battle I will 
try to get to see her —”’ 

Off somewhere, on the left, a solitary cannon boomed. The grey 
soldiers turned their heads. “A signal somewhere! We’re spread 
over all creation. Crossing here and crossing there, and every half- 
hour losing your way! It’s like the maze we used to read about — 
this bottomless, mountainless, creeky, swampy, feverish, damned 
lowland —”’ 


GAINES’S MILL 451 


The two beneath the sycamore smiled. ‘‘‘ Back to our mountains,’ 
eh?” said Edward. Cleave regarded the forest somewhat frowningly. 
“We are not,” he said, “‘in a very good humour this morning. Yes- 
terday was a day in which things went wrong.” 

“Tt was a sickening disappointment,” acknowledged Edward. 
“We listened and listened. He’s got a tremendous reputation, you 
know — Jackson. Foreordained and predestined to be at the cru- 
cial point at the critical moment! Backed alike by Calvin and God! 
So we looked for a comet to strike Fitz John Porter, and instead we 
were treated to an eclipse. It was a frightful slaughter. I saw Gen- 
eral Lee afterwards — magnanimous, calm, and grand! What was 
really the reason?” 

Cleave moved restlessly. “I cannot say. Perhaps I might hazard 
a guess, but it’s no use talking of guesswork. To-day I hope for a 
change.” 

“You consider him a great general ?” 

“A very great one. But he’s sprung from earth — ascended like 
the rest of us. For him, as for you and me, there’s the heel undipped 
and the unlucky day.” 

The officers of the first grey regiment began to bestir themselves. 
Fall in — Fall in — Fall in! Edward rose. ‘‘ Well, we shall see what 
we shall see. Good-bye, Richard!” The two shook hands warmly; 
Cary ran to his place in the line; the “Tuckahoe” regiment, cheered 
by the 65th, swung from the forest road into a track leading across 
an expanse of broom sedge. It went rapidly. The dew was dried, 
the mist lifted, the sun blazing with all his might. During the night 
the withdrawing Federals had also travelled this road. It was cut 
by gun-wheels, it was strewn with abandoned wagons, ambulances, 
accoutrements of all kinds. There were a number of dead horses. 
They lay across the road, or to either hand in the melancholy fields 
of sedge. From some dead trees the buzzards watched. One horse, 
far out in the yellow sedge, lifted his head and piteously neighed. 

The troops came into the neighbourhood of Gaines’s Mill. Through 
grille after grille of woven twig and bamboo vine they descended to 
another creek, sleeping and shadowed, crossed it somehow, and came 
up into forest again. Before them, through the trees, was visible 
a great open space, hundreds of acres. Here and there it rose into 
knolls, and on these were planted grey batteries. Beyond the open 


452 THE LONG ROLL 


there showed a horseshoe of a creek, fringed with swamp growth, a . 
wild and tangled woodland; beyond this again a precipitous slope, 
almost a cliff, mounting to a wide plateau. All the side of the ascent 
was occupied by admirable breastworks, triple lines, one above the 
other, while at the base between hill and creek, within the enshad- 
owing forest, was planted a great abattis of logs and felled trees. 
Behind the breastwork and on the plateau rested Fitz John Porter, 
reinforced during the night by Slocum, and now commanding thirty- 
five thousand disciplined and courageous troops. Twenty-two bat- 
teries frowned upon the plain below. The Federal drums were 
beating — beating — beating. The grey soldiers lay down in the 
woods and awaited orders. They felt, rather than saw, that other 
troops were all about them, —A. P. Hill — Longstreet — couched 
in the wide woods, strung in the brush that bordered creek and 
swamp, massed in the shelter of the few low knolls. 

They waited long. The sun blazed high and higher. Then a grey 
battery, just in front of this strip of woods, opened with a howitzer. 
The shell went singing on its errand, exploded before one of the 
triple tiers. The plateau answered with a hundred-pounder. The 
missile came toward the battery, overpassed it, and exploded above 
the wood. It looked as large as a beehive; it came with an awful 
sound, and when it burst the atmosphere seemed to rock. The men 
lying on the earth beneath jerked back their heads, threw an arm 
over their eyes, made a dry, clicking sound with their tongue against 
their teeth. The howitzer and this shell opened the battle — again 
AP Hall's: battle. 

Over in the forest on the left, near Cold Harbour, where Stone- 
wall Jackson had his four eee his ov .H. Hill’ s, Ewell’s, 
and Whiting’s, there was long, long waiting. The men had all the 
rest they Se and more besides. They fretted, they grew queru- 
lous. “Oh, good God, why don’t we move? There’s firing — heavy 
firing — on the right. Are we going to lie here in these swamps and 
fight mosquitoes all day? Thought we were brought here to fight 
Yankees! The general walking in the forest and saying his prayers ? 
Oh. 20:-to. helt”! 

A battery, far over on the edge of a swamp, broke loose, tearing 
the sultry air with shell after shell tossed against a Federal breast- 
work on the other side of the marsh. The Stonewall Brigade grew 






GAINES’S MILL 453 


vividly interested. ‘“‘That’s D. H. Hill over there! D. H. Hill isa 
fighter from way back! O Lord, why don’t we fight too? Holy Moses, 
what a racket!”’ The blazing noon filled with crashand roar. Ten of 
Fitz John Porter’s guns opened, full-mouthed, on the adventurous 
battery. 

It had nerve, é/an, sheer grit enough for a dozen, but it was out- 
metalled. One by one its guns were silenced, — most of the horses 
down, most of the cannoneers. Hill recalled it. A little later he 
received an order from Jackson. “General Hill will withdraw his 
troops to the left of the road, in rear of his present position, where he 
will await further orders.’’ Hill went, with shut lips. One o’clock 
— two o’clock — half-past two. ‘‘O God, have mercy! Js this the 
Army of the Valley?” 

Allan Gold, detached at dawn on scout duty, found himself about 
this time nearer to the Confederate centre than to his own base of 
operations at the left. He had been marking the windings of creeks, 
observing where there were bridges and where there were none, the 
depth of channels and the infirmness of marshes. He had noted the 
Federal positions and the amount of stores abandoned, set on fire, 
good rice and meat, good shoes, blankets, harness, tents, smoulder- 
ing and smoking in glade and thicket. He had come upon dead men 
and horses and upon wounded men and horses. He had given the 
wounded drink. He had killed with the butt of his rifle a hissing and 
coiled snake. He had turned his eyes away from the black and 
winged covering of a dead horse and rider. Kneeling at last to drink 
at a narrow, hidden creek, slumbering between vine-laden trees, he 
had raised his eyes, and on the other side marked a blue scout look- 
ing, startled, out of a hazel bush. There was a click from two mus- 
kets; then Allan said, ‘‘Don’t fire! I won’t. Why should we? Drink 
and forget.’”’ The blue scout signified acquiescence. “All right, 
Reb. I’m tired fighting, anyway! Was brought up a Quaker, and 
would n’t mind if I had staved one! Got anything to mix with the 
water?” 

ce No.” 

“Well, let’s take it just dry so.” Both drank, then settled back 
on their heels for a moment’s conversation. ‘‘ Awful weather,” said 
the blue scout. ‘Did n’t know there could be such withering heat! 
And malaria — lying out of nights in swamps, with owls hooting 


454 THE LONG ROLL 


_and jack-o’-lanterns round your bed! Ain’t you folks most beat 
yet?” 

“No,” said the grey scout. ‘Don’t you think you’ve about worn 
your welcome out and had better go home? — Look out there! Your 
gun’s slipping into the water.” 

The blue recovered it. “It’s give out this morning that Stonewall 
Jackson’s arrived on the scene.”’ 

“Yes, he has.” 

“Well, he’s a one-er! Good many of you we wish would desert. 
— No; we ain’t going home till we go through Richmond.” 

“Well,” said Allan politely, “first and last, a good many folk have 
settled hereabouts since Captain John Smith traded on the Chicka- 
hominy with the Indians. There’s family graveyards all through 
these woods. I hope you’ll like the country.” | 

The other drank again of the brown water. “It was n’t so bad in 
the spring time. We thought it was awful lovely at first, all span- 
gled with flowers and birds. — Are you married ?” 

(<3 Nig. 

“Neither am I. But I’m going to be, when I get back to where I 
belong. Her name’s Flora.” 

“That’s a pretty name.”’ 

“Yes, and she’s pretty, too —”’ He half closed his eyes and smiled 
blissfully, then rose from the laurels. ‘‘ Well, I must be trotting along, 
away from Cold Harbour. Funniest names! What does it mean ?”’ 

“Tt was an inn, long ago, where you got only cold fare. Should n’t 
wonder if history is n’t going to repeat itself —”’ He rose, also, tall 
and blonde. “Well, I must be travelling, too —”’ 

‘“‘Rations getting pretty low, are n’t they? How about coffee?”’ 

“Oh, one day,” said Allan, “we’re going to drink a lot of it! No, 
I don’t know that they are especially low.” 

The blue scout dipped a hand into his pocket. ‘Well, I’ve got a 
packet of it, and there’s plenty more where that came from. — 
Catch, Reb!” | 

Allan caught it. “You’re very good, Yank. Thank you.” 

“Have you got any quinine?” 

(<9 No.” 

The blue scout tossed across a small box. ‘‘There’s for you! No, 
I don’t want it. We’ve got plenty. — Well, good-bye.” 


GAINES’S MILL 455 


“T hope you'll get back safe,” said Allan, “and have a beautiful 
wedding.” 

The blue vanished in the underbrush, the grey went on his way 
through the heavy forest. He was moving now toward sound, heavy, 
increasing, presaging a realm of jarred air and ringing ear-drums. 
Ahead, he saw a column of swiftly moving troops. Half running, he 
overtook the rear file. ‘Scout?’ —‘*‘ Yes— Stonewall Brigade —”’ 
“All right! all right! This is A. P. Hill’s division.— Going into 
battle. Come on, if you want to.” 

Through the thinning woods showed a great open plain, with 
knolls where batteries were planted. The regiment to which Allan 
had attached himself lay down on the edge of the wood, near one 
of the cannon-crowned eminences. Allan stretched himself beneath 
a black gum at the side of the road. Everywhere was a rolling smoke, 
everywhere terrific sound. A battery thundered by at a gallop, six 
horses to each gun, straining, red-nostrilled, fiery-eyed. It struck 
_across a corner of the plain. Over it burst the shells, twelve-pound- 
ers — twenty-pounders. A horse went down — the drivers cut the 
traces. A caisson was struck, exploded with frightful glare and 
sound. About it, when the smoke cleared, writhed men and horses, 
but the gun was dragged off. Through the rain of shells the battery 
gained a lift of ground, toiled up it, placed the guns, unlimbered 
and began to fire. A South Carolina brigade started with a yell from 
the woods to the right, tore in a dust cloud across the old fields, fur- 
rowed with gullies, and was swallowed in the forest about the creek 
which laved the base of the Federal position. This rose from the 
level like a Gibraltar, and about it now beat a wild shouting and 
rattle of musketry. Allan rose to his knees, then to his feet, then, 
drawn as by a magnet, crept through a finger of sumach and sassa- 
fras, outstretched from the wood, to a better vantage point just in 
rear of the battery. 

Behind him, through the woods, came a clatter of horses’ hoofs. It 
was met and followed by cheering. Turning his head, he saw a 
general and his staff, and though he had never seen Lee he knew 
that this was Lee, and himself began to cheer. The commander-in- 
chief lifted his grey hat, came down the dim, overarched, aisle-like 
road, between the cheering troops. With his staff he left the wood 
for the open, riding beneath the shelter by the finger of sumach and 


456 THE LONG ROLL 


sassafras, toward the battery. He saw Allan, and reined up iron- 
grey Traveller. ‘You do not belong to this regiment. — A scout? 
General Jackson’s? — Ah, well, I expect General Jackson to strike 
those people on the right any moment now!” He rode up to the 
battery. The shells were raining, bursting above, around. In the 
shelter of the hill the battery horses had at first, veteran, undis- 
turbed, cropped the parched grass, but now one was wounded and 
now another. An arm was torn from a gunner. A second, stooping 
over a limber chest, was struck between the shoulders, crushed, 
flesh and bone, into pulp. The artillery captain came up to the 
general-in-chief. ‘General Lee, won’t you go away? Gentlemen, 
won’t you tell him that there’s danger?”’ 

The staff reinforced the statement, but without avail. General 
Lee shook his head, and with his field-glasses continued to gaze 
toward the left, whence should arise the dust, the smoke, the sound 
of Jackson’s flanking movement. There was no sign on the left, but 
here, in the centre, the noise from the woods beyond the creek was 
growing infernal. He lowered the glass. ‘Captain Chamberlayne, 
will you go tell General Longstreet —”’ 

Out of the thunder-filled woods, back from creek and swamp and 
briar and slashing, from abattis of bough and log, from the shadow 
of that bluff head with its earthworks one above the other, from the 
scorching flame of twenty batteries and the wild singing of the minies, 
rushed the South Carolina troops. The brigadier — Maxey Gregg 
— the regimental, the company officers, with shouts, with appeals, 
with waved swords, strove to stop the rout. The command rallied, 
then broke again. Hell was in the wood, and the men’s faces were 
grey and drawn. “We must rally those troops!” said Lee, and gal- 
loped forward. He came into the midst of the disordered throng. 
“Men, men! Remember your State— Do your duty!” They 
recognized him, rallied, formed on the colours, swept past him with 
a cheer and reéntered the deep and fatal wood. 

The battery in front of Allan began to suffer dreadfully. The 
horses grew infected with the terror of the plain. They jerked their 
heads back; they neighed mournfully; some left the grass and began 
to gallop aimlessly across the field. The shells came in a stream, 
great, hurtling missiles. Where they struck flesh or ploughed into 
the earth, it was with a deadened sound; when they burst in air, it 




















THE BATTLE 


GAINES’S MILL 457 


was like crackling thunder. The blue sky was gone. A battle pall 
wrapped the thousands and thousands of men, the guns, the horses, 
forest, swamp, creeks, old fields; the great strength of the Federal 
position, the grey brigades dashing against it, hurled back like 
Atlantic combers. It should be about three o’clock, Allan 
thought, but he did not know. Every nerve was tingling, the blood 
pounding in his veins. Time and space behaved like waves charged 
with strange driftwood. He felt a mad excitement, was sure that if 
he stood upright or tried to walk he would stagger. An order ran 
down the line of the brigade he had adopted. Attention! 

He found himself on his feet and in line, steady, clear of head as 
though he trod the path by Thunder Run. Forward! March! The 
brigade cleared the wood, and in line of battle passed the exhausted 
battery. Allan noted a soldier beneath a horse, a contorted, purple, 
frozen face held between the brute’s fore-legs. The air was filled with 
whistling shells; the broom sedge was on fire. Right shoulder. Shift 
Arms! Charge! 

Somewhere, about halfway over the plain, he became convinced 
that his right leg from the hip down was gone to sleep. He had an 
idea that he was not keeping up. A line passed him — another; he 
must n’t let the others get ahead! and for a minute he ran quite rap- 
idly. There was a yellow, rain-washed gulley before him; the charge 
swept down one side and up the other. This crack in the earth was 
two thirds of the way across the open; beyond were the wood, the 
creek, the abattis, the climbing lines of breastworks, the thirty-five 
thousand in blue, and the tremendous guns. The grey charge was 
yelling high and clear, preparing to deliver its first fire; the air a 
roar of sound and a glaring light. Allan went down one side of the 
gulley with some ease, but it was another thing to climb the other. 
However, up he got, almost to the top — and then pitched forward, 
clutching at the growth of sedge along the crest. It held him steady, 
and he settled into a rut of yellow earth and tried to think it over. 
Endeavouring to draw himself a little higher, a minie ball went . 
through his shoulder. The grey charge passed him, roaring on to 
the shadowy wood. 

He helped himself as best he could, staunched some blood, drew 
his own conclusions as to his wounds. He was not suffering much; 
not over much. By nature he matched increasing danger with 


458 THE LONG ROLL 


increasing coolness. All that he especially wanted was for that 
charge to succeed — for the grey to succeed. His position here, on 
the rim of the gully, was an admirable one for witnessing all that the 
shifting smoke might allow to be witnessed. It was true that a keen- 
ing minie or one of the monstrous shells might in an instant shear 
his thread of life, probably would do so; all the probabilities lay 
that way. But he was cool and courageous, and had kept himself 
ready to go. An absorbing interest in the field of Gaines’s Mill, a 
passionate desire that Victory should wear grey, dominated all other 
feeling. Half in the seam of the gully, half in the sedge at the top, 
he made himself as easy as he could and rested a spectator. 

The battle smoke, now heavily settling, now drifting like clouds 
before a wind, now torn asunder and lifting from the scene, made 
the great field to come and go in flashes, or like visions of the night. 
He saw that A. P. Hill was sending in his brigades, brigade after 
brigade. He looked to the left whence should come Jackson, but 
over there, just seen through the smoke, the forest stood sultry and 
still. Behind him, however, in the wood at the base of the armed 
hill, there rose a clamour and deep thunder as of Armageddon. Like 
a grey wave broken against an iron shore, the troops with whom he 
had charged streamed back disordered, out of the shadowy wood 
into the open, where in the gold sedge lay many a dead man and 
many a wounded. Allan saw the crimson flag with the blue cross 
shaken, held on high, heard the officers crying, ‘“‘ Back, men, back! 
Virginians, do your duty!” The wave formed again. He tried to 
rise so that he might go with it, but could not. It returned into the 
wood. Before him, racing toward the gully, came another wave — 
Branch’s brigade, yelling as it charged. He saw it a moment like 
a grey wall, with the colours tossing, then it poured down into the 
gully and up and past him. He put up his arms to shield his face, 
but the men swerved a little and did not trample him. The worn 
shoes, digging into the loose earth covered him with dust. The mov- 
ing grey cloth, the smell of sweat-drenched bodies, of powder, of 
leather, of hot metal, the panting breath, the creak and swing, the 
sudden darkening, heat and pressure — the passage of that wave 
took his own breath from him, left him white and sick. Branch 
went on. He looked across the gully and saw another wave coming 
— Pender, this time. Pender came without yelling, grim and grey 


GAINES’S MILL 459 


and close-mouthed. Pender had suffered before Beaver Dam Creek; 
to-day there was not much more than half a brigade. It, too, passed, 
a determined wave. Allan saw Field in the distance coming up. 
He was tormented with thirst. Three yards from the gully lay 
stretched the trunk of a man, the legs blown away. He was almost 
sure he caught the glint of a canteen. He lay flat in the sedge and 
dragged himself to the corpse. There was the canteen, indeed; 
marked with a great U. S., spoil taken perhaps at Williamsburg or 
at Seven Pines. It was empty, drained dry as a bone. There was 
another man near. Allan dragged himself on. He thought this one 
dead, too, but when he reached him he opened large blue eyes and 
breathed, ‘“‘Water!”’ Allan sorrowfully shook his head. The blue 
eyes did not wink nor close, they glazed and stayed open. The scout 
dropped beside the body, exhausted. Field’s charge passed over 
him. When he opened his eyes, this portion of the plain was like a 
sea between cross winds. All the broken waves were wildly tossing. 
Here they recoiled, fled, even across the gully; here they seethed, 
inchoate; there, regathering form and might, they readvanced to 
the echoing hill, with its three breastworks and its eighty cannon. 
Death gorged himself in the tangled slashing, on the treacherous 
banks of the slow-moving creek. A. P. Hill was a superb fighter. 
He sent in his brigades. They returned, broken; he sent them in 
again. They went. The 16th and 22d North Carolina passed the 
three lines of blazing rifles, got to the head of the cliff, found them- 
selves among the guns. In vain. Morrell’s artillerymen, Morrell’s 
infantry, pushed them back and down, down the hillside, back into 
the slashing. The 35th Georgia launched itself like a thunderbolt 
and pierced the lines, but it, too, was hurled down. Gregg’s South 
Carolinians and Sykes Regulars locked and swayed. Archer and 
Pender, Field and Branch, charged and were repelled, to charge 
again. Save in marksmanship, the Confederate batteries could not 
match the Federal; strength was with the great, blue rifled guns, 
and yet the grey cannoneers wrought havoc on the plateau and 
amid the breastworks. The sound was enormous, a complex tumult 
that crashed and echoed in the head. The whole of the field existed 
in the throbbing, expanded brain — all battlefields, all life, all the 
world and other worlds, all problems solved and insoluble. The 
wide-flung grey battlefront was now sickle-shaped, convex to the 


460 THE LONG ROLL 


foe. The rolling dense smoke flushed momently with a lurid glare. 
In places the forest was afire, in others the stubble of the field. From 
horn to horn of the sickle galloped the riderless horses. Now and 
again a wounded one among them screamed fearfully. 

Allan dragged himself back to the gully. It was safer there, be- 
cause the charging lines must lessen speed, break ranks a little; they 
would not be so resistlessly borne on and over him. He was not 
light-headed, or he thought he was not. He lay on the rim of the 
gully that was now trampled into a mere trough of dust, and he 
looked at the red light on the rolling vapour. Where it lifted he saw, 
as in a pageant, war in mid-career. Sound, too, had organized. He 
could have beaten time to the gigantic rhythm. It rose and sank; 
it was made up of groaning, shouting, breathing of men, gasping, 
and the sounds that horses make, with louder and louder the thun- 
der of the inanimate, the congregated sound of the allies man had 
devised, — the saltpetre he had digged, the powder he had made, the 
rifles he had manufactured, the cannon he had moulded, the solid 
shot, grape, canister, shrapnel, minie balls. The shells were fearful, 
Allan was fain to acknowledge. They passed like whistling winds. 
They filled the air like great rocks from a blasting. The staunchest 
troops blanched a little, jerked the head sidewise as the shells burst 
and showered ruin. There came into Allan’s mind a picture in 
the old geography, — rocks thrown up by Vesuvius. He thought 
he was speaking to the geography class. “I’ll show you how they 
look. I was lying, you see, at the edge of the crater, and they were 
all overhead.”’ The picture passed away, and he began to think that 
the minies’ unearthly shriek was much like the winter wind round 
Thunder Run Mountain — Sairy and Tom — Was Sairy baking 
gingerbread? — Of course not; they did n’t have gingerbread now. 
Besides, you did n’t want gingerbread when you were thirsty. . . . 
Oh, water, water, water, water! . . . Tom might be taking the toll — 
if there was anybody to pay it, and if they kept the roads up. Roses 
in bloom, and the bees in them and over the pansies. . . . The wrens 
sang, and Christianna came down the road. Roses and pansies, with 
their funny little faces, and Sairy’s blue gingham apron and the blue 
sky. The water-bucket on the porch, with the gourd. He began 
to mutter a little. “Time to take in, children — did n’t you hear 
the bell? [rang it loudly. Iam ringing it now. Listen! Loud, loud 


GAINES’S MILL 461 


— like church bells — and cannons. The old lesson. . . . Curtius 
and the gulf.”’ 

In the next onrush a man stumbled and came to his knees beside 
him. Not badly hurt, he was about to rise. Allan caught his arm. 
“For God’s sake — if you’ve got any water —” The man, a tall 
Alabamian, looked down, nodded, jerked loose another U. S. can- 
teen, and dropped it into the other’s hand. “All right, all right — 
not at all — not at all —”’ He ran on, joining the hoar and shouting 
wave. Allan, the flask set to his lips, found not water, but a little 
cold and weak coffee. It was nectar — it was happiness — it was 
life — though he could have drunk ten times the amount! 

The cool draught and the strength that was in it revived him, 
drew his wandering mind back from Thunder Run to Gaines’s Mill. 
Again he wished to know where was the Army of the Valley. It 
might be over there, in the smoke pall, turning Fitz John Porter’s 
right . . . but hedid not believeit. Brigade after brigade had swept 
past him, had been broken, had reformed, had again swept by into 
the wood that was so thick with the dead. A. P. Hill continued to 
hurl them in, standing, magnificent fighter! his eyes on the dark and 
bristling stronghold. On the hill, behind the climbing breastworks 
and the iron giants atop, Fitz John Porter, good and skilful soldier, 
withdrew from the triple lines his decimated regiments, put others in 
their places, scoured with the hail of his twenty-two batteries the 
plain of the Confederate centre. All the attack was here — all the 
attack was here — and the grey brigades were thinning like mist 
wreaths. The dead and wounded choked field and gully and wood 
and swamp. Allan struck his hands together. What had happened 
— what was the matter? How long had he lain here? Two hours, at 
the least — and always it was A. P. Hill’s battle, and always the 
grey brigades with a master courage dashed themselves against the 
slope of fire, and always the guns repelled them. It was growing late. 
The sun could not be seen. Plain and woods were darkening, dark- 
ening and filled with groaning. It was about him like a melancholy 
wind, the groaning. He raised himself on his hands and saw how 
many indeed were scattered in the sedge, or in the bottom of the 
yellow gully, or slanted along its sides. He had not before so loudly 
heard the complaining that they made, and for a moment the brain 
wondered why. Then he was aware that the air was less filled with 


462 THE LONG ROLL 


missiles, that the long musketry rattle and the baying of the war 
dogs was a little hushed. Even as he marked this the lull grew more 
and more perceptible. He heard the moaning of the wounded, be- 
cause now the ear could take cognizance. 

The shadow deepened. A horse, with a blood-stained saddle, un- 
hurt himself, approached him, stood nickering for a moment, then 
panic-struck again, lashed out with his heels and fled. All the plain, 
the sedge below, the rolling canopy above, was tinged with reddish 
umber. The sighing wind continued, but the noise of firing died 
and died. For all the moaning of the wounded, there seemed to fall a 
ghastly silence. 

Over Allan came a feeling as of a pendulum forever stopped, as of 
Time but a wreck on the shore of Space, and Space a deserted coast, 
an experiment of some Power who found it ineffective and tossed it 
away. The Now and Here, petrified forever, desolate forever, an 
obscure bubble in the sea of being, a faint tracing on the eternal 
Mind to be overlaid and forgotten — here it rested, and would rest. 
The field would stay and the actors would stay, both forever.as they 
were, standing, lying, in motion or at rest, suffering, thirsting, tast- 
ing the sulphur and feeling the heat, held here forever in a vise, grey 
shadows suffering like substance, knowing the lost battle... . A 
deadly weakness and horror came over him. “O God! — Let us 
die —”’ 

From the rear, to A. P. Hill’s right, where was Longstreet, broke 
a faint yelling. It grew clearer, came nearer. From another direc- 
tion — from the left — burst a like sound, increasing likewise, high, 
wild, and clear. Like a breath over the field went the conviction — 
Jackson — Jackson at last! Allan dropped in the broom sedge, his 
arm beneath his head. The grey sleeve was wet with tears. The 
pendulum was swinging; he was home in the dear and dread world. 

The sound increased; the earth began to shake with the tread of 
men; the tremendous guns began again their bellowing. Longstreet 
swung into action, with the brigades of Kemper, Anderson, Pickett, 
Willcox, Pryor, and Featherstone. On the left, with his own divi- 
sion, with Ewell’s, with D. H. Hill’s, Jackson struck at last like 
Jackson. Whiting, with two brigades, should have been with Jack- 
son, but, missing his way in the wood, came instead to Longstreet, 
and with him entered the battle. The day was descending. All the 


GAINES’S MILL 463 


plain was smoky or luridly lit; a vast Shield of Mars, with War in 
action. With Longstreet and with Jackson up at last, Lee put forth 
his full strength. Fifty thousand men in grey, thirty-five thousand 
men in blue, were at once engaged —in three hundred years there 
had been in the Western Hemisphere no battle so heavy as this one. 
The artillery jarred even the distant atmosphere, and the high 
mounting clouds were tinged with red. Six miles away, Richmond 
listened aghast. 

Allan forgot his wounds, forgot his thirst, forgot the terror, sick 
_and cold, of the minute past. He no longer heard the groaning. The 
storm of sound swept it away. He was a fighter with the grey; all his 
soul was in the prayer. “Let them come! Let them conquer!’ He 
thought, Let the war bleed and the mighty die. He saw a charge ap- 
proaching. Willingly would he have been stamped into the earth 
would it further the feet on their way. The grey line hung an in- 
stant, poised on the further rim of the gully, then swept across and 
onward. Until the men were by him, it was thick night, thick and 
stifling. They passed. He heard the yelling as they charged the 
slope, the prolonged tremendous rattle of musketry, the shouts, 
the foiled assault, and the breaking of the wave. Another came, a 
wall of darkness in the closing day. Over it hung a long cloud, red- 
stained. Allan prayed aloud. “O God of Battles —O God of 
Battles... | 

The wave came on. It resolved itself into a moving frieze, a wide 
battle line of tall men, led by a tall, gaunt general, with blue eyes and 
flowing, tawny hair. In front was the battle-flag, red ground and 
blue cross. Beside it dipped and rose a blue flag with a single star. 
The smoke rolled above, about the line. Bursting overhead, a great 
shell lit all with a fiery glare. The frieze began to sing. 


“The race is not to them that’s got 
The longest legs to run, 
Nor the battle to that people 
That shoots the biggest gun —”’ 


Allan propped himself upon his hands. ‘‘ Fourth Texas! Fourth 
Texas! — Fourth —” 

The frieze rushed down the slope of the gully, up again, and on. 
A foot came hard on Allan’s hand. He did not care. He had a vision 


464 THE LONG ROLL 


of keen, bronze faces, hands on gun-locks. The long, grey legs went 
by him with a mighty stride. Gun-barrel and bayonet gleamed like 
moon on water. The battle-flag with the cross, the flag with the 
single star, spread red and blue wings. Past him they sped, gigantic, 
great ensigns of desperate valour, war goddesses, valkyries, . . . 
rather the great South herself, the eleven States, Rio Grande to 
Chesapeake, Potomac to the Gulf! All the shells were bursting, 
all the drums were thundering — 

The Texans passed, he sank prone on the earth. Other waves he 
knew were following — all the waves! Jackson with Ewell, Long- 
street, the two Hills. He thought he saw his own brigade — saw the 
Stonewall. But it was in another quarter of the field, and he could 
not call to it. All the earth was rocking like a cradle, blindly swing- 
ing in some concussion and conflagration as of world systems. 

As dusk descended, the Federal lines were pierced and broken. The 
Texans made the breach, but behind them stormed the other waves, 
— D. H. Hill, Ewell, the Stonewall Brigade, troops of Longstreet. 
They blotted out the triple breastworks; from north, west, and south 
they mounted in thunder upon the plateau. They gathered to them- 
selves here twenty-two guns, ten thousand small arms, twenty- 
eight hundred prisoners. They took the plateau. Stubbornly fight- 
ing, Fitz John Porter drew off his exhausted brigades, plunged 
downward through the forest, toward the Chickahominy. Across 
that river, all day long McClellan, with sixty-five thousand men, had 
rested behind earthworks, bewildered by Magruder, demonstrating 
in front of Richmond with twenty-eight thousand. Now, at the 
twelfth hour, he sent two brigades, French and Meagher. 

Night fell, black as pitch. The forest sprang dense, from miry 
soil. The region was one where Nature set traps. In the darkness it 
was not easy to tell friend from foe. Grey fired on grey, blue on blue. 
The blue still pressed, here in disorder, here with a steady front, 
toward the grapevine bridge across the Chickahominy. French and 
Meagher arrived to form a strong rearguard. Behind, on the plateau, 
the grey advance paused, uncertain in the darkness and in its mortal 
fatigue. Here, and about the marshy creek and on the vast dim 
field beyond, beneath the still hanging battle cloud, lay, of the grey 
and the blue, fourteen thousand dead and wounded. The sound of 
their suffering rose like a monotonous wind of the night. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 


on the plateau near the McGehee house. All was dark, all 
was confused. In the final and general charge, regiments had 
become separated from brigades, companies from regiments. Frag- 
ments of many commands were on the plateau, — Whiting, Ewell, 
D. H. Hill, Jackson’s own division, portions of Longstreet’s bri- 
gades, even a number of A. P. Hill’s broken, exhausted fighters. 
Many an officer lay silent or moaning, on the scarped slope, in the 
terrific tangle about the creek, or on the melancholy plain beyond. 
Captains shouted orders in the colonels’ places; lieutenants or 
sergeants in the captains’. Here, on the plateau, where for hours 
the blue guns had thundered, the stars were seen but dimly through 
the smoke. Bodies of men, and men singly or in twos and threes, 
wandered like ghosts in Hades. “‘This way, Second Virginia!” “‘ Fall 
in here, Hood’s Texans!’ —“*‘ Hampton’s men, over here!” — “‘ Fif- 
teenth Alabama! Fifteenth Alabama!’ — “I’m looking for the 
Milledgeville Hornets.’ — “Iverson’s men! Iverson’s men!’ — 
‘Fall in here, Cary’s Legion!” — “ First Maryland!”— “ Fifth Vir- 
ginia over here!’ — “Where in hell is the Eleventh Mississippi!” 
— “Lawton! Lawton!” — “Sixty-fifth Virginia, fall in here!” 
East and south, sloping toward the Chickahominy, ran several 
miles of heavy forest. It was filled with sound, — the hoofs of horses, 
the rumbling of wheels, the breaking through undergrowth of masses 
of men, — sound that was dying in volume, rolling toward the 
Chickahominy. On the trampled brow of the plateau, beneath shot- 
riddled trees, General D. H. Hill, coming from the northern face, 
found General Winder of the First Brigade standing with several of 
his officers, trying to pierce the murk toward the river. “ You rank 
here, General Winder?” said Hill. 
“T think so, general. Such a confusion of troops I have never 
seen! They have been reporting tome. It is yours now to command.” 


Te Stonewall Brigade, a unit in Jackson’s advance, halted 


466 THE LONG ROLL 


“Have you seen General Jackson?” 

“No. Not lately.” | 

D. H. Hill looked toward the Chickahominy. “I don’t deny it’s 
temptatious! And yet. . . . Very dark. Thick woods. Don’t know 
what obstructions. Men exhausted. Our centre and right not come 
up. Artillery still across the swamp — What’s that cheering toward 
the river?”’ 

“T don’t know. McClellan may have sent reinforcements.” 

“Have you pickets out?” 

“Yes. What do you think, Cleave?” 

“T think, sir, the rout outweighs the reinforcements. I think we 
should press on at once.” 

“Tf we had cavalry!” said Winder impatiently. “However, Gen- 
eral Stuart has swept down toward the Pamunkey. That will be 
their line of retreat — to the White House.”’ 

“There is the chance,” said Cleave, “that General McClellan 
will abandon that line, and make instead for the James and ie gun- 
boats at Harrison’s Landing.” 

Hill nodded. ‘Yes, it’s a possibility. General Lee is aware of it. 
He’ll not unmask Richmond and come altogether on this side the 
Chickahominy until he knows. All that crowd down there may set 
to and cross to-night —”’ 

“How many bridges?” asked Lawton. 

“‘Alexander’s and Grapevine. Woodbury’s higher up.” 

“T do not believe that there are three, sir. There is a report that 
two are burned. I believe that the Grapevine is their only road —”’ 

“You believe, colonel, but you do not know. What do you think, 
General Winder?” 

“T think, sir, with Colonel Cleave, that we should push down 
through the woods to the right of the Grapevine Bridge. They, too, 
are exhausted, their horses jaded, their ammunition spent. We 
could gather a little artillery — Poague’s battery is here. They are 
crushed together, in great masses. If we could fall upon them, cause 
a great panic there at the water, much might come of it.”’ 

Hill looked with troubled eyes about the plateau. “And two or 
three thousand men, perhaps, be swallowed up and lost! A grand 
charge that took this plateau — yes! and a grand charge at Beaver 
Dam Creek yesterday at dark, and a grand charge when Albert 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 467 


Sidney Johnston was killed, and a grand charge when Ashby was 
killed, and on a number of other occasions, and now a grand night- 
time charge with worn-out troops. All grand — just the kind of 
grandeur the South cannot afford! . . . An army yet of blue troops 
and fresh, shouting brigades, and our centre and right on the other 
side of the creek. . . . I don’t dare do it, gentlemen! — not on my 
own responsibility. What do you think, General Lawton?” 

“T think you are right, sir.”’ 

“More and more troops are coming upon the plateau,” said 
Winder. ‘General Hill, if you will order us to go we will see to it 
that you do not repent —”’ 

“They are defeated and retreating, sir,’ said Cleave. “If they 
are crossing the river, it is at least in the realm of probability that 
they have but the one path. No one knows better than you what 
resolute pressure might now accomplish. Every moment that we 
wait they gain in steadiness, and other reserves will come up. Make 
their junction with their centre, and to-morrow we fight a terrific 
battle where to-night a lesser struggle might secure a greater vic- 
tory.” 

“Speaking largely, that is true,” said Hill. “But — I wish Gen- 
eral Jackson were here! I think you know, gentlemen, that, person- 
ally, I could wish, at this minute, to be down there in the woods, 
beside the Grapevine Bridge. But with the knowledge that the 
enemy is bringing up reserves, with the darkness so thick, with no 
great force, and that exhausted, and with no artillery, I cannot take 
the responsibility of the advance. If General Jackson were here —” 

“May I send in search of him, sir?” 

“Yes, General Winder, you may do that. And if he says, ‘Go!’ 
there won’t one of you be happier than I.” 

“We know that, general. — Cleave, I am going to send you. 
You’re far the likeliest. We want him to come and lead us to the 
completest victory. By God, we want Front Royal and Port Re- 
public again!” 

Cleave, turning, disappeared into the darkness. ‘See to your 
men, General Winder. Get them ready,” said Hill. “I’m going a 
little way into the woods to see what I can see myself.”’ He went, 
Lawton with him. Before many minutes had passed they were back. 
“Nearly walked into their lines! Strung across the Grapevine road. 


’ 


468 THE LONG ROLL 


Massed thick between us and the Chickahominy. Scattered like 
acorns through the woods. Pretty miserable, I gather. Passed party 
hunting water. Speech bewrayeth the man, so did n’t say anything. 
Heard the pickets talking. “I was Meagher and French came up. 
They ’re building great fires by the water. Looks as though they 
meant to cross. Nothing of General Jackson yet ?” 

“No, sir, Not yet. 

‘“‘Well, I ’m going into the house for a morsel of food. Send for me 
the moment you hear anything. I wish the artillery were up. Who’s 
this? Colonel Fauquier Cary? In the darkness, could n’t tell. Yes, 
General Winder thinks so, too. We’ve sent to ask General Jackson. 
Come with me, Cary, to the house. Faugh! this stifling heat! And 
that was Sykes we were fighting against — George Sykes! Remem- 
ber he was my roommate at the Point?” 

The short path to McGehee’s house was not trodden without 
difficulty. All the great plateau was cumbered with débris of the 
struggle. On the cut and furrowed ground one stumbled upon aban- 
doned stores and arms. There were overturned wagons and ambu- 
lances with dead horses; there were ruined gun-carriages; there were 
wrecked litters, fallen tents, dead men and the wounded. Here, and 
on the plain below, the lanterns of the surgeons and their help- 
ers moved like glowworms. They gathered the wounded, blue and 
grey. “Treat the whole field alike,” had said Lee. Everywhere 
were troops seeking their commands, hoarsely calling, joining at 
last their comrades. Fires had been kindled. Dim, dim, in the 
southwestern sky beyond the yet rolling vapour, showed a gleaming 
where was Richmond. D. H. Hill and Fauquier Cary went in- 
doors. An aide managed to find some biscuits, and there was 
water from the well. “I have n’t touched food since daybreak,” 
said the general. 

“Nor I. Much as I like him, I am loath to let Fitz John Porter 
strike down the York River line to-night, if that’s his road, or cross 
the Chickahominy if that’s the road! We have a victory. Press it 
home and fix it there.” 

“T believe that you are right. Surely Jackson will see it so.” 

“Where is General Jackson?” 

“God knows! — Thank you, Reid. Poor fare, Cary, but familiar 
Come, Reid, get your share.” 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 469 


They ate the hard biscuits and drank the well-water. The air was 
still and sultry; through the windows they heard, afar off, the 
bugles — their own and those of the foe. 


“* High over all the melancholy bugle grieves.”’ 


Moths came in to the candle. With his hand Cary warned them 
away. One lit on his sleeve. “I wonder what you think of it,’”’ he 
said, and put him out of window. There was a stir at the door. A 
sergeant appeared. ‘‘We’re gathering up the wounded, general — 
and we found a Yankee officer under the trees just here — and he 
said you’d know him — but he’s fainted dead away —”’ He moved 
aside. ‘‘ Litters gave out long ago, so we’re taking U. S. blankets —”’ 

Four men, carrying by the corners a blanket with an unconscious 
man upon it, came into the room. The Confederate officers looked. 
“No, I don’t know him. Why, wait — Yes, I do! It’s Clitz— Clitz 
that was so young and red-cheeked and our pet at the Point! ... 
Yes, and one day in Mexico his regiment filed past, gotng_into a 
fight, and he looked so like a gallant boy that I prayed to God that 
Clitz might not be hurt! . . Reid, have him put in a room here! 
See that Dr. Mott sees him at once.—O God, Cary, this fra- 
tricidal war! Fighting George Sykes all day, and now this boy —”’ 

“Yes,” said Cary. “Once to-day I was opposed to Fitz John 
Porter. He looked at me out of a cloud, and I looked at him out of 
one, and the battle roared between. I always liked him.” He 
walked across the room, looked out of the window upon the battle- 
field, and came back. “But,” he said grimly, “it is a war of inva- 
sion. What do you think is wrong with Jackson?” 

The other looked at him with his fine, kindly eyes. “Why, let me 
tell you, Cary, — since it won’t go any further, — I am as good a 
Presbyterian as he is, but I think he has prayed too much.” 

“T see!” said Cary. “Well, I would be willing to put up a peti- 
tion of my own just now. — Delay! Delay! We have set oppor- 
tunity against a wall and called out the firing party.” He rose. 
“Thanks for the biscuits. I feel another man. I’ll go now and look 
after my wounded. There are enough of them, poor souls!” 

Another stir occurred at the door. The aide appeared. “They’ve 
taken some prisoners in the wood at the foot of the hill, sir. One of 
them says he’s General Reynolds —” | 


470 THE LONG ROLL 


“Reynolds! Good God, Reynolds! Bring him in —” 

General Reynolds came in. “Reynolds!” — “Hill!” — “How 
are you, Reynolds?” — “Good Lord, it’s Fauquier Cary!”’ 

The aide put a chair. The prisoner sank into it and covered his 
face with his hands. Presently he let them drop. “Hill, we ought 
not to be enemies! Messmates and tent-mates fora year!...It’s 
ghastly.” 

“T’Il agree with you there, Reynolds. It’s ghastlier than ghastly. 
— You are n’t hurt ?” 

Outside, over the great hilltop upon which Richard Cleave was 
moving, the darkness might be felt. The air smelled strongly of 
burned powder, was yet thickened by smoke. Where fires had been 
kindled, the ruddy light went up like pillars to sustain a cloudy roof. 
There were treetops, burnished, high in air; then all the land fell to 
the swampy shores of the creek, and beyond to the vast and sombre 
battle plain, where the shells had rained. The masses of grey troops 
upon it, resting on their arms, could be divined by the red points of 
camp-fires. Lanterns, also, were wandering like marsh lights, up 
and down and to and fro. Here, on the plateau, it was the same. They 
danced like giant fireflies. He passed a blazing log, about which were 
gathered a dozen men. Some wag of the mess had said something 
jocular; to a man they were laughing convulsively. Had they 
been blamed, they would perhaps have answered that it was better 
to laugh than to cry. Cleave passed them with no inclination to 
blame, and came to where, under the trees, the 65th was gathered. 
Here, too, there were fires; his men were dropped like acorns on the 
ground, making a little “‘coosh,” frying a little bacon, attending to 
slight hurts, cognizant of the missing but not referring to them 
loudly, glad of victory, burying all loss, with a wide swing of cour- 
age making the best of it in the darkness. When they saw Cleave 
they suspended all other operations long enough to cheer him. He 
smiled, waved his hand, spoke a short word to Hairston Breckin- 
ridge, and hurried on. He passed the 2d Virginia, mourning its 
colonel — Colonel Allen — fallen in the front of the charge. He 
passed other bivouacs — men of Rodes’s, of Garland’s, of Trimble’s. 
“Where is General Jackson?” — ‘“‘Can’t tell you, sir —”’ “Here is 
General Ewell.”’ 

“Old Dick” squatted by a camp-fire, was broiling a bit of as, 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 471 


head on one side, as he looked up with bright round eyes at Cleave, 
whom he liked. “That you, Richard Cleave? By God, sir, if I were 
as excellent a major-general as I am a cook! — Have a bit? — Well, 
we wolloped them! They fought like men, and we fought like men, 
and by God, I can’t get the cannon out of my ears! General Jack- 
son? — I thought he was in front with D. H. Hill. Going to doany- 
thing more to-night? It’s pretty late, but I’m ready.” 

“Nothing — without General Jackson,” said Cleave. ‘Thank 
you, general —if I might have a mouthful of coffee? I haven’t 
the least idea when I have eaten.” 

Ewell handed him the tin cup. He drank hastily and went on. 
Now it was by a field hospital, ghastly sights and ghastly sounds, 
pine boughs set for torches. He shut his eyes in a moment’s faint- 
ness. It looked a demoniac place, a smoke-wreathed platform in 
some Inferno circle. He met a staff officer coming up from the plain. 
“General Lee has ridden to the right. He is watching for McClel- 
lan’s next move. There’s a rumour that everything’s in motion 
toward the James. If it’s true, there’s a chase before us to-morrow, 
eh? —A. P. Hill suffered dreadfully. ‘Prince John’ kept McClellan 
beautifully amused. — General Jackson? On the slope of the hill 
by the breastworks.”’ 

A red light proclaimed the place as Cleave approached it. It 
seemed a solitary flame, night around it and a sweep of scarped 
earth. Cleave, coming into the glow, found only the old negro Jim, 
squat beside it like a gnome, his eyes upon the jewelled hollows, his 
lips working. Jim rose. “De gineral, sah? De gineral done sont 
de staff away ter res’. Fo’ de Lawd, de gineral bettah follah dat 
*’zample! Yaas, sah, — ober dar in de big woods.” 

Cleave descended the embankment and entered a heavy wood. 
A voice spoke — Jackson’s — very curtly. “Who is it, and what is 
your business?” 

“Tt is the colonel of the 65th Virginia, sir. General Winder sends © 
me, with the approval of General D. H. Hill, from the advance by 
the McGehee house.” 

A part of the shadow detached itself and came forward as Jack- 
son. It stalked past Cleave out of the belt of trees and over the 
bare red earth to the fire. The other man followed, and in the glare 
faced the general again. The leaping flame showed Jackson’s 


472 THE LONG ROLL 


bronzed face, with the brows drawn down, the eyes looking inward, 
and the lips closed as though no force could part them. Cleave knew 
the look, and inwardly set his own lips. At last the other spoke. 
“Well, sir?” 

“The enemy is cramped between us and the Chickahominy, sir. 
Our pickets are almost in touch of theirs. If we are scattered and 
disorganized, they are more so, — confused — distressed. We are 
the victors, and the troops still feel the glow of victory.” 

“Well?” 

“There might be a completer victory. We need only you to lead 
us, sir.” 

“You are mistaken. The men are wearied. They worked very 
hard in the Valley. They need not do it all.” 

“They are not so wearied, sir. There is comment, I think, on 
what the Army of the Valley has not done in the last two days. We 
have our chance to refute it all to-night.” 

“‘General Lee is the commander-in-chief. General Lee will give 
orders.” | 

“General Lee has said to himself: ‘He did so wonderfully in the 
Valley, I do not doubt he will do as wonderfully here. I leave him 
free. He’ll strike when it is time.’ —It is time now, sir.” 

“Sir, you are forgetting yourself.”’ 

“Sir, I wish to rouse you.” 

Jackson walked past the fire to a fallen tree, sat himself down and 
looked across to the other man. The low flame more deeply bronzed 
his face. His eyes looked preternaturally sunken. He sat, char- 
acteristically rigid, a figure in grey stone. There was about him a 
momentary air of an Indian, he looked so ruthless. If it was not 
that, thought Cleave, then it was that he looked fanatic. Which- 
ever it might be, he perceived that he himself stood in arctic air. 
He had been liked, he knew; now he saw the mist of disfavour 
rise. Jackson’s voice came gratingly. ‘“‘ Who sent you?” 

“General Winder and General D. H. Hill.” 

“You will tell General Hill that I shall make no further attack 
to-night. I have other important duties to perform.” 

“T know what I risk,” said Cleave, ‘‘and I do not risk it lightly. 
Have you thought of how you fell on them at Front Royal and at 
Winchester? Here, too, they are confused, retreating — a greater 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 473 


force to strike, a greater result to win, a greater service to do for the 
country, a greater name to make for yourself. To-morrow morning 
all the world may say, ‘So struck Napoleon —’ ” 

“‘Napoleon’s confidence in his star was pagan. Only God rules.” 

‘And the man who accepts opportunity — is he not His servant? 
May we not, sir, may we not make the attack?” 

“No, sir; not to-night. We have marred too many Sundays —” 

“Tt is not Sunday!” 

Jackson looked across with an iron countenance. ‘So little the 
fighter knows! See, what war does! But I will keep, in part at 
least, the Sabbath. You may go, sir.” 

“‘General Jackson, this is Friday evening.” 

“Colonel Cleave, did you hear my order? Go, sir! — and think 
yourself fortunate that you do not go under arrest.” 

“Sir — Sir—’” 

Jackson rose. ‘‘One other word, and I take your sword. It oc- 
curs to me that I have indulged you in a freedom that — Go!”’ 

Cleave turned with sharp precision and obeyed. Three paces took 
him out ofthe firelight into the overhanging shadow. He made a 
gesture of sorrow and anger. ‘‘Who says that magic ’s dead? Now, 
how long will that potion hold him?” He stumbled in the loose, 
bare earth, swamp and creek below him. He looked down into that 
trough of death. “I gained nothing, and I have done for myself! 
If I know him — Ugh!” 

He shook himself, went on through the sultry, smoky night, alter- 
nate lantern-slides of glare and darkness, to the eastern face of the 
plateau. Here he found Winder, reported, and with him encountered 
D. H. Hill coming with Fauquier Cary from the McGehee house. 
“What’s that?” said Hill. “He won’t pursue to-night? Very well, 
that settles it! Maybe they’ll be there in the morning, maybe 
not. Look here, Winder! Reynolds’s taken — you remember Rey- 
nolds?”’ 

Cary and Cleave had a moment apart. “All well, Fauquier? The 
general? — Edward?” 

“T think so. I saw Warwick for a moment. A minie had hurt his 
hand — not serious, he said. Edward I have not seen.” 

“T had a glimpse of him this morning. — This morning!” 

“Yes — long ago, is it not? You'll get your brigade after this.” 


474 THE LONG ROLL 


The other looked at him oddly. ‘Will I? I strongly doubt it. 
Well, it seems not a large thing to-night.” 

Beyond the main battlefield where A. P. Hill’s and Longstreet’s 
shattered brigades lay on their arms, beyond the small farmhouse 
where Lee waked and watched, beyond the Chickahominy and its 
swamps, beyond forest and farm land, lay Richmond under the stars. 
Eastwardly, within and without its girdling earthworks, that bril- 
liant and histrionic general, John Bankhead Magruder, El Capitan 
Colorado, with a lisping tongue, a blade like Bayard’s, and a talent 
for drama and strategy, kept General McClellan under the im- 
pression, confirmed by the whole Pinkerton force, that ‘“‘at least 
eighty thousand men” had remained to guard Richmond, when 
Lee with “‘at least eighty thousand men” had crossed the Chicka- 
hominy. Richmond knew better, but Richmond was stoically calm 
as to the possibility of a storming. What it had been hard to be 
calm over was the sound, this Friday, of the guns beyond the Chick- 
ahominy. Mechanicsville, yesterday, was bad enough, but this was 
frightful. Heavy, continuous, it took away the breath and held the 
heart in an iron grip. All the loved ones there— all the loved ones 
there!—and heavier and heavier toward night grew the fearful 
sound. . . . Then began the coming of the wounded. In the long 
dusk of the summer evening, the cannonading ceased. A little 
after nine arrived couriers, announcing the victory. The church 
bells of Richmond, not yet melted into cannon, began to ring. 
“Tt was a victory —it was a victory,” said the people to one an- 
other. . . . But the wounded continued to come in, ambulance, 
cart, and wagon rolling like tumbrels over the stones. To many a 
mother was brought tidings of the death of her son, and many a 
wife must say,“‘I am widowed,” and many children cried that night 
for their father. The heat was frightful. The city tossed and 
moaned, without sleep, or nursed, or watched, or wandered fevered 
through the streets. The noise of the James around its rocky islands 
was like the groaning of the distant battlefield. The odour of the 
June flowers made the city like a chamber of death. All windows 
were open wide to the air, most houses lighted. Sometimes from 
these there came forth a sharp cry; sometimes womens’ forms, rest- 
less in the night, searching again the hospitals. ‘(He might be 
here.’’ — ‘‘He might be at this one.” Sometimes, before such or 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 475 


such a house, cart or carriage or wagon stopped. “Oh, God! wounded 
or —?” All night long fared the processions from the field of Gaines’s 
Mill to the hospitals. Toward dawn it began to be “No room. 
Try Robinson’s— try the De Sales.” — “Impossible here! We can 
hardly step between the rows. The beds gave out long ago. Take 
him to Miss Sally Tompkins.”’ — ‘‘ No room. Oh, the pity of it! Take 
him to the St. Charles or into the first private house. They are all 
thrown open.” 

Judith, kept at the Stonewall all the night before, had gone home, 
bathed, drawn the shutters of her small room, lain down and reso- 
lutely closed her eyes. She must sleep, she knew, — must gather 
strength for the afternoon and night. The house was quiet. Last 
night the eldest son had been brought in wounded. The mother, her 
cousin, had him in her chamber; she and his mammy and the old 
family doctor. His sister, a young wife, was possessed by the idea 
that her husband might be in one of the hospitals, delirious, unable 
to tell where he belonged, calling upon her, and no one understand- 
ing. She was gone, in the feverish heat, upon her search. There 
came no sounds from below. After the thunder which had been in 
the ear, after the sounds of the hospital, all the world seemed as 
silent as a cavern or as the depth of the sea. Judith closed her eyes, 
determinedly stilled her heart, drew regular breath, put herself out 
of Richmond back in a certain cool and green forest recess which she 
loved, and there wooed sleep. It came at last, with a not unhappy 
dream. She thought she was walking on the hills back of Green- 
wood with her Aunt Lucy. The twosaid they were tired and would 
rest, and entered the graveyard and sat down upon the bank of ivy 
beside Ludwell Cary’s grave. That was all natural enough; a thing 
they had done many times. They were taught at Greenwood that 
there was nothing mournful there. Shells lay about them, beneath 
the earth, but the beneficent activities had escaped, and were active 
still, beneficent still. . . . The word “shells” in the dream turned the 
page. She was upon a great sea beach and quite alone. She sat and 
looked at the waves coming rolling in, and presently one laid 
Richard at her feet. She bandaged the cut upon his forehead, and 
called him by his name, and he looked at her and smiled. ‘‘Out of 
the ocean, into the ocean,” he said. ‘All of us. A going forth and 
a returning.” She felt herself, in the dream, in his arms, and found 


4.76 THE LONG ROLL 


it sweet. The waves were beneath them; they lay now on the crests, 
now in the hollows, and there seemed no port. This endured a long 
while, until she thought she heard the sea-fairies singing. Then there 
came a booming sound, and she thought, “This is the port, or per- 
haps it is an island that we are passing.’”’ She asked Richard which 
it was, but he did not answer, and she turned upon the wave and 
found that he was not there. . . . It was seaweed about her arms. 
The booming grew louder, rattled the window-glass. She opened her 
eyes, pushed her dark loosened hair from her arms and bosom, and 
sat up. “The cannon again!” 

She looked at her watch. It was two o’clock. Rising, she put on 
her dark, thin muslin, and took her shady hat. The room seemed to 
throb to the booming guns. All the birds had flown from the tulip 
tree outside. She went downstairs and tapped at her cousin’s door. 
“‘ How is he?’’ — “‘ Conscious now, thank God, my dear! The doctor 
says he will be spared. How the house shakes! And Walter and 
Ronald out there. You are going back?” 

“Yes. Do not look for me to-night. There will be so much to be 
done —” 

“Yes, yes, my dear. Louder and louder! And Ronald is so reck- 
less! You must have something to eat.” 

“Shirley will give me a glass of milk. Tell Rob to get well. 
Good-bye.” 

She kissed her cousin, drank her glass of milk in the dining-room 
where the silver was jingling on the sideboard, and went out into 
the hot, sound-filled air. At three she was at her post in the hospital. 

The intermittent thunder, heavier than any on the continent be- 
fore, was stilled at last, —at nine, as had happened the night before. 
The mazed city shook the mist from before its eyes, and settled to 
the hot night’s work, with the wagons, bringing the dead and the 
wounded, dull on the cobblestones to the ear, but loud, loud to the 
heart. All that night the Stonewall Hospital was a grisly place. By 
the next morning every hospital in town was choked with the 
wounded, and few houses but had their quota. The surgeons looked 
like wraiths, the nursing women had dark rings beneath their eyes, 
set burningly in pale faces, the negroes who valiantly helped had 
a greyish look. More emotional than the whites, they burst now and 
then into a half wail, half chant. So heavy was the burden, so inade- 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 477 


quate the small, beleaguered city’s provision for the weight of help- 
less anguish, that at first there was a moment of paralysis. As easy 
to strive with the tornado as with this wind of pain and death Then 
the people rallied and somewhat outstripped a people’s best. 

From the troops immediately about the city came the funeral 
escorts. All day the Dead March from “Saul” wailed through the 
streets, out to Hollywood. The churches stayed open; old and 
young, every man in the city, white or black, did his part, and so 
did all the women. The need was so great that the very young girls, 
heretofore spared, found place now in hospital or house, beside the 
beds, the pallets, the mere blanket, or no blanket, on the floor. They 
could keep away the tormenting flies, drawn by the heat, the glare, 
the blood and effluvia, could give the parched lips water, could 
watch by the less terrifically hurt. All the city laboured; putting 
aside the personal anguish, the private loss known, suspected, or but 
fearfully dreaded. Glad of the victory but with only calamity be- 
neath its eyes, the city wrestled with crowding pain, death, and grief. 

Margaret Cleave was at one of the great hospitals. An hour later 
came, too, Miriam and Christianna. ‘‘ Yes, you can help. Miriam, 
you are used to it. Hold this bandage so, until the doctor comes. 
If it grows blood-soaked — like this one — call some one at once. 
Christianna, you are strong. — Mrs. Preston, let her have the bucket 
of water. Go upand down, between the rows, and give water to those 
who want it. If they cannot lift themselves, help them — so!” 

Christianna took the wooden bucket and the tin dipper. For all 
she looked like a wild rose she was strong, and she had a certain 
mountain skill and light certainty of movement. She went down the 
long room, giving water to all who moaned for it. They lay very 
thick, the wounded, side by side in the heat, the glare of the room, 
where all the light possible must be had. Some lay outstretched and 
rigid, some much contorted. Some were delirious, others writhed 
and groaned, some were most pathetically silent and patient. Nearly 
all were thirsty; clutched the dipper with burning fingers, drank, with 
their hollow eyes now on the girl who held it, now on mere space. 
Some could not help themselves. She knelt beside these, raised the 
head with one hand, put water to the lips with the other. She gained 
her mountain steadiness and did well, crooning directions in her 
calm, drawling voice. This bucket emptied, she found where to fill 


478 THE LONG ROLL 


it again, and pursued her task, stepping lightly between the hud- 
dled, painful rows, among the hurrying forms of nurses and sur- 
geons and coloured helpers. 

At the very end of the long lane, she came upon a blanket spread 
on the blood-stained floor. On it lay a man, blond and straight, 
closed eyes with a line between them, hand across his breast touch- 
ing his shirt where it was stiff with dried blood. “Air you thirsty?” 
began Christianna, then set the bucket suddenly down. 

Allan opened his eyes. “Very thirsty. . . . I reckon I am light- 
headed. I’m not on Thunder Run, am I?” 

The frightful day wore on to late afternoon. No guns shook the 
air in these hours. Richmond understood that, out beyond the en- 
trenchments, there was a pause inthe storm. McClellan was leaving 
his own wonderful earthworks. But would he retreat down the 
Peninsula by the way he had come, or would he strike across and 
down the James to his gunboats by Westover? The city gathered 
that General Lee was waiting to find out. In the mean time the day 
that was set to the Dead March in “ Saul’? passed somehow, in the 
June heat and the odour of flowers and blood. 

Toward five o’clock Judith left the Stonewall Hospital. She had 
not quitted it for twenty-four hours, and she came now into the light 
and air like a form emerging from Hades, very palely smiling, with 
the grey of the underworld, its breath and its terror still about her. 
There was hardly yet a consciousness of fatigue. Twelve hours be- 
fore she had thought, “‘If I do not rest a little, I shall fall.”’ But she 
had not been able to rest, and the feeling had died. For the last 
twelve she had moved like an automaton, swift, sure, without a 
thought of herself. It was as though her will stood somewhere far 
above and swayed her body like a wand. Even now she was going 
home, because the will said she must; must rest two hours, and come 
back fresher for the night. 

As she came out into the golden light, Cleave left the group of 
young and old about the door and met her. In the plane along 
which life now moved, nothing was unnatural; certainly Richmond 
did not find it so, that a lover and his beloved should thus encounter 
in the street, a moment between battles. Her dark eyes and his 
grey ones met. To find him there seemed as natural as it had been 
in her dream; the street was no more to her than the lonely beach. 


THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 479 


They crossed it, went up toward the Capitol Square, and, entering, 
found a green dip of earth with a bench beneath a linden tree. Be- 
hind them rose the terraced slope to the pillared Capitol; as always, 
in this square children’s voices were heard with their answering 
nurses, and the squirrels ran along the grass or upon the boughs 
above. But the voices were somewhat distant and the squirrels did 
not disturb; it was a leafy, quiet nook. The few men or women who 
passed, pale, distrait, hurrying from one quarter of the city to an- 
other, heeded as little as they were heeded. Lovers’ meetings — 
lovers’ partings — soldiers — women who loved them — faces pale 
and grave, yet raised, hands in hands, low voices in leafy places 
—man and woman together in the golden light, in the breathing 
space before the cannon should begin again — Richmond was grow- 
ing used to that. All life was now in public. For the most part a 
clear altruism swayed the place and time, and in the glow smallness 
of comment or of thought was drowned. Certainly, it mattered not 
to Cleave and Judith that it was the Capitol Square, and that people 
went up and down. 

‘“‘T have but the shortest while,” he said. “I came this morning 
with Allen’s body — the colonel of the 2d. I ride back directly. 
I hope that we will move to-night.” 

“Following McClellan?” 

“To get across his path, if possible.” 

“There will be another battle?” 

“Yes. More than one, perhaps.” 

“T have believed that you were safe. I do not see that I could 
have lived else.” 

“Many have fallen; many are hurt. I found Allan Gold in the 
hospital. He will not die, however. . . . Judith, how often do I 
see your face beside the flag!” 

“When I was asleep I dreamed of you. We were drifting together, 
far out at sea — your arm here —”’ She lifted his hand, drew his 
arm about her, rested her head on his breast. ‘‘I love you — I love 
you — I love you.” 

They stayed in the leafy place and the red-gold light for half an 
hour, speaking little, sitting sometimes with closed eyes, but hand 
in hand. It was much as though they were drifting together at sea, 
understanding perfectly, but weary from battling, and with great 


480 THE LONG ROLL 


issues towering to the inner vision. They would have been less 
nobly minded had their own passion inexorably claimed them. All 
about them were suffering and death and the peril of their cause. 
For one half-hour they drew happiness from the darkly gigantic 
background, but it was a quiet and lofty form, though sweet, sweet! 
with whom they companioned. When the time was passed the two 
rose, and Cleave held her in his arms. ‘‘ Love — Love —”’ 

When he was gone she waited awhile beneath the trees, then 
slowly crossed the Capitol Square and moved toward the small room 
behind the tulip tree. The streets were flooded with a sunset glow. 
Into Franklin from Main came marching feet, then, dull, dull! the 
muffled drums. Soldiers and furled colours and the coffin, atop it the 
dead man’s cap and gauntlets and sword; behind, pacing slowly, his 
war horse, stirrups crossed over saddle. Soldiers, soldiers, and the 
drums beating like breaking hearts. She moved back to a doorstep 
and let the Dead March from “Saul” go by. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 
THE RAILROAD GUN 


HE troops, moving at dawn to the Chickahominy, over a road 
and through woods which testified in many ways of the blue 
retreat, found the Grapevine Bridge a wreck, the sleepers 

hacked apart, framework and middle structure cast into the water. 
Fitz John Porter and the 5th Army Corps were across, somewhere 
between the river and Savage Station, leaving only, in the thick 
wood above the stream, a party of sharpshooters and a battery. 
When the grey pioneers advanced to their work, these opened fire. 
The bridge must be rebuilt, and the grey worked on, but with de- 
lays and difficulties. D. H. Hill, leading Jackson’s advance, brought 
up two batteries and shelled the opposite side. The blue guns and 
riflemen moved to another position and continued, at short inter- 
vals, to fire on the pioneers. It was Sunday the twenty-ninth; fear- 
fully hot by the McGehee house, and on Turkey Hill, and in the 
dense mid-summer woods, and in the mosquito-breeding bogs and 
swamps through which meandered the Chickahominy. The river 
spread out as many arms as Briareus; short, stubby creeks, slow 
waters prone to overflow and creep, between high knotted roots of 
live-oak and cypress, into thickets of bog myrtle. The soil here- 
abouts was black and wet, further back light and sandy. The Valley 
troops drew the most uncomplimentary comparisons. To a man 
they preferred mountains, firm rolling champaign, clean rivers with 
rocky bottoms, sound roads, and a different vegetation. They were 
not in a good humour, anyhow. 

Ewell was at Dispatch Station, seven miles below, guarding Bot- 
tom’s Bridge and tearing up the York River Railroad. Stuart was 
before him, sweeping down on the White House, burning McClel- 
lan’s stations and stores, making that line of retreat difficult enough 
for an encumbered army. But McClellan had definitely abandoned 
any idea of return upon Yorktown. The head of his column was set 
for the James, for Harrison’s Landing and the gunboats. There were 


482 THE LONG ROLL 


twenty-five difficult miles to go. He had something like a hundred 
thousand men. He had five thousand wagons, heavy artillery trains, 
enormous stores, a rabble of camp followers, a vast, melancholy 
freight of sick and wounded. He left his camps and burned his de- 
pots, and plunged into the heavy, still, and torrid forest. This Sun- 
day morning, the twenty-ninth, the entrenchments before Richmond, 
skilful, elaborate pieces of engineering, were found by Magruder’s 
and Huger’s scouts deserted by all but the dead and a few score 
of sick and wounded, too far gone to be moved. Later, columns of 
smoke, rising from various quarters of the forest, betrayed other 
burning camps or depots. This was followed by tidings which served 
to make his destination certain. He was striking down toward 
White Oak Swamp. There the defeated right, coming from the 
Chickahominy, would join him, and the entire great force move 
toward the James. Lee issued his orders. Magruder with Huger 
pursued by the Williamsburg road. A. P. Hill and Longstreet, leav- 
ing the battlefield of the twenty-seventh, crossed the Chickahominy 
by the New Bridge, passed behind Magruder, and took the Darby- 
town road. A courier, dispatched to Ewell, ordered him to rejoin 
Jackson. The latter was directed to cross the Chickahominy with 
all his force by the Grapevine Bridge, and to pursue with eagerness. 
He had the directest, shortest road; immediately before him the 
corps which had been defeated at Gaines’s Mill. With D. H. Hill, 
with Whiting and Lawton, he had now fourteen brigades — say 
twenty thousand men. 

The hours passed in languid sunshine on the north bank of the 
Chickahominy. The troops were under arms, but the bridge was not 
finished. The smoke and sound of the rival batteries, the crack of 
the hidden rifles on the southern side, concerned only those imme- 
diately at issue and the doggedly working pioneers. Mere casual 
cannonading, amusement of sharpshooters, no longer possessed the 
slightest tang of novelty. Where the operation was petty, and a man 
in no extreme personal danger, he could not be expected to be much 
interested. The troops yawned; some of the men slept; others 
fretted. ‘Why can’t we swim the damned old trough? They’ll get 
away! Thank the Lord, I was n’t born in Tidewater Virginia! Oh, 
I’d like to see the Shenandoah!”’ 

The 65th Virginia occupied a rise of sandy ground covered with 


THE RAILROAD GUN 483 


hazel bushes. Company A had the brink of it, looking out toward 
the enormously tall trees towering erect from the river’s margin of 
swamp. The hazel bushes gave little shade and kept off the air, the 
blue above was intense, the buzzards sailing. Muskets were stacked, 
the men sprawling at ease. A private, who at home was a Sunday 
School superintendent, read his Bible; another, a lawyer, tickled a 
hop toad with a spear of grass; another, a blacksmith, rebound the 
injured ankle of a schoolboy. Some slept, snoring in the scanty 
shade; some compared diaries or related, scrappily enough, battle 
experiences. “‘ Yes, and Robinson was scouting, and he was close 
to Garland’s line, and, gosh! he said it was short enough! And Gar- 
land rode along it, and he said, said he, ‘Boys, you are not many, 
but you are a noble few.’”’ Some listened to the booming of the 
sparring batteries; two or three who had lost close friends or kins- 
men moped aside. The frank sympathy of all for these made itself 
apparent. The shadiest hazel bushes unobtrusively came into their 
possession; there was an evident intention of seeing that they got 
the best fare when dinner was called; a collection of tobacco had 
been taken and quietly pushed their way. Some examined knap- 
sack and haversacks, good oilcloths, belts, rolled blankets, canteens, 
cartridge-boxes and cartridges, picked up upon the road. Others 
seriously did incline to search for certain intruders along the seams 
of shirt and trousers; others merely lay on their backs and looked up 
into Heaven. Billy Maydew was one of these, and Steve Dagg over- 
turned the contents of a knapsack. 

It was well filled, but with things Steve did not want. “O Gawd! 
picters and pincushions and Testaments with United States flags in 
them — I never did have any luck, anyhow! —in this here war nor 
on Thunder Run neither!” 

Dave Maydew rolled over. “Steve says Thunder Run didn’t like 
him — Gosh! what’s a-going to happen ef Steve takes to telling the 
truth?” 

Sergeant Coffin turned from contemplation of a bursting shell 
above the Grapevine crossing. “If anybody finds any letter-paper 
and does n’t want it —” 

A chorus arose. ‘Sorry we have n’t got any!”’— “I have got some 
—lovely! But I’ve got a girl, too.””—“ Sorry, sergeant, but it is n’t 
pale blue, scented with forget-me-nots.’’ —“ Just think her a letter — 


484 THE LONG ROLL 


think it out loud! Wait, I’ll show you how. Darling Chloe — Don’t 
get angry! He’s most gotten over getting angry and it becomes him 
beautifully — Darling Chloe — What’re you coming into it for, Billy 
Maydew? ‘Don’t tease him!’ — My son, he loves to be teased. All 
lovers love to be teased. Darling Chloe. It is Sunday morning. The 
swans are warbling your name and so are half a dozen pesky Yankee 
Parrotts. The gentle zephyrs speak of thee, and so does the hot 
simoom that blows from Chickahominy, bringing an inordinate num- 
ber of mosquitoes. I behold thy sinuous grace in the curls of smoke 
from Reilly’s battery, and also in the slide and swoop of black buz- 
zards over a multitude of dead horses in the woods. Darling Chloe, 
we are stranded on an ant heap which down here they call a hill, and 
why in hell we don’t swim the river is more than at the moment I 
can tell you. It’s rumoured that Old Jack’s attending church in the 
neighbourhood, but we are left outside to praise God from whom all 
blessings flow. Darling Chloe, this company is not so unpopular 
with me as once it was. War is teaching it a damned lot, good tem- 
per and pretty ways and what not — It is teaching it! Who says 
it is not? — Darling Chloe, if you could see how long and lean and 
brown we areand how ragged we are and how lousy — Of course, of 
course, sergeant, you’re not! Only the high private in the rear rank 
is, and even he says he’s not — Darling Chloe, if I could rise like 
one of those damned crows down there and sail over these damned 
flats and drop at your feet in God’s country beyond the mountains, 
you would n’t walk to church to-day with me. You’d turn up your 
pretty little nose, and accept the arm of some damned bombproof 
— Look out! What’s the matter here? ‘The last straw! shan’t 
slander her!’—I’m not slandering her. I don’t believe either she’d 
do it. Need n’t all of you look so glum! I’ll take it back. We know, 
God bless every last woman of them, that they don’t do it! They 
have n’t got any more use for a bombproof than we have! — I can’t 
retract handsomer than that! —Darling Chloe, the Company’s 
grown amiable, but it don’t think much so far of its part in this 
campaign. Heretofore in tableaux and amateur theatricals it has 
had a star réle, and in this damned Richmond play it’s nothing but 
a walking shadow! Darling Chloe, we want somebody to whoop 
things up. We demand the centre of the stage — 

It was so hot on the little sandy hill that there was much strag- 


THE RAILROAD GUN 485 


gling down through the woods to some one of the mesh of water- 
courses. The men nearest Steve were all turned toward the dis- 
courser to Chloe,who sat on a lift of sand, cross-legged like an East- 
ern scribe. Mathew Cofhn, near him, looked half pleased, half sulky 
at the teasing. Since Port Republic he was a better-liked non-com- 
missioned officer. Billy Maydew, again flat on his back, stared at the 
blue sky. Steve stole a tin cup and slipped quietly off through the 
hazel bushes. 

He found a muddy runlet straying off from the river and quenched 
his thirst, then, turning, surveyed through the trees the hump of 
earth he had left and the company upon it. Beyond it were other 
companies, the regiment, the brigade. Out there it was hot and 
glaring, in here there was black, cool, miry loam, shade and water. 
Steve was a Sybarite born, and he lingered here. He did n’t mean 
to straggle, for he was afraid of this country and afraid now of his 
colonel; he merely lingered and roamed about a little, beneath the 
immensely tall trees and in the thick undergrowth. In doing this 
he presently came, over quaking soil and between the knees of cy- 
presses, flush with the Chickahominy itself. He sat down, took his 
own knees in his arms and looked at it. It was not so wide, but it 
looked stiller than the sky, and bottomless. The banks were so low 
that the least rain lifted it over. It strayed now, here and there, 
between tree roots. There was no such word as “‘sinister’’ in Steve’s 
vocabulary. He only said, “Gawd! I would n’t live here for choice!” 
The country across the stream engaged his attention. Seen from 
this bank it appeared all forest clad, but where his own existence 
from moment to moment was in question Steve could read the sign- 
boards as well as another. Certain distant, southward moving, 
yellowish streaks he pronounced dust clouds. There were roads 
beneath, and moving troops and wagon trains. He counted four 
columns of smoke of varying thickness. The heavier meant a cluster 
of buildings, holding stores probably, the thinner some farmhouse 
or barn or mill. From other signs he divined that there were clear- 
ings over there, and that the blue troops were burning hayricks and 
fences as well as buildings. Sound, too — it seemed deathly still 
here on the brim of this dead water, and yet there was sound — the 
batteries, of course; down the stream where they built the bridge, 
but also a dull, low, dreary murmur from across, —from the thick 


4.86 THE LONG ROLL 


forest and the lost roads, and the swamps through which guns were 
dragged; from the clearings, the corn and wheat fields, the burning 
depots and encampments and houses of the people — the sound of a 
hostile army rising from the country where two months before it 
had settled. All was blended; there came simply a whirring murmur 
out of the forest beyond the Chickahominy. 

Steve rose, yawned, and began again to prowl. Every rood of this 
region had been in possession of that humming army over there. All 
manner of desirable articles were being picked up. Orders were 
strict. Weapons, even injured weapons, ammunition, even half- 
spoiled ammunition, gun-barrels, ramrods, bayonets,cartridge-boxes, 
belts — all these must be turned in to the field ordnance officer. The 
South gleaned her battlefields of every ounce of lead or iron, every 
weapon or part of a weapon, every manufactured article of war. This 
done, the men might appropriate or themselves distribute apparel, 
food, or other matters. Steve, wandering now, his eyes on earth, 
saw nothing. The black wet soil, the gnarled roots, the gloomy 
meanders of the stream, looked terribly lonely. “Gawd! even the 
water-rats don’t come here!” thought Steve, and on his way back 
to the hill entered a thicket of low bushes with shiny green leaves. 
Here he all but stumbled over a dead soldier in a blue uniform. He 
lay on his face, arms out, hands clutching at some reed-like grass. 
His rifle was beside him, haversack— all undisturbed. “Picket,” 
said Steve. “O Gawd, ain’t war glorious?”’ 

Not at all without imagination, he had no fondness for touching 
dead men, but there were several things about this one that he 
wanted. He saw that the shoes would n’t fit, and so he left them 
alone. His own rifle was back there, stacked with the others on the 
hot hillside, and he had no intention of bothering with this one. If 
the ordnance officer wanted it, let him come himself and get it! He 
exchanged cartridge-boxes, and took the other’s rolled oilcloth, and 
then he looked into the haversack. 

Rising to his feet, he glanced about him with quick, furtive, squir- 
rel-like motions of his head. Cool shade, stillness, a creepy loneli- 
ness. Taking the haversack, he left the thicket and went back to the 
brink of Chickahominy. Here he sat down between the cypress 
knees and drew out of the haversack the prize of prizes. It fixed a 
grin upon his lean, narrow face, the sight and Smell of it, the black, 


THE RAILROAD GUN 487 


squat bottle. He held it up to the light; it was three quarters full. 
The cork came out easily; he put it to his lips and drank. “Gawd! 
it ain’t so damned lonely, after all!” 

The sun climbed to the meridian. The pioneers wrought as best 
they might on the Grapevine Bridge. The blue battery and the blue 
sharpshooters persisted in their hindering, and the grey battery con- 
tinued to interfere with the blue. In the woods and over the low 
hills back of the Chickahominy the grey brigades of Stonewall Jack- 
son rested, impatiently wondering, staring at the river, staring at the 
smoke of conflagrations on the other side and the dust streaks mov- 
ing southward. Down on the swampy bank, squat between the 
cypress knees, Steve drank again, and then again, — in fact, emptied 
the squat, black bottle. The stuff filled him with a tremendous cour- 
age, and conferred upon him great fluency of thought. He waxed 
eloquent to the cypress roots upon the conduct of the war. “Gawd! 
if they’d listen ter me I’d te — tell them how! — I’d bui — build 
a bridge for the whole rotten army to cross on! Ef it broke I’d 
bui— build another. Yah! They don’t ’pre— ’preciate a man when 
they see him. Gawd! they’re damn slow, and ain’t a man over here 
got anything to drink! It’s all over there.” He wept a little. “O 
Gawd, make them hurry up, so’s I kin git across.” He put the 
bottle to his lips and jerked his head far back, but there was not a 
drop left to trickle forth. He flung it savagely far out into the 
water. “Ef I thought there was another like you over there —” 
His courage continued to mount as he went further from himself. 
He stood up and felt a giant; stretched out his arm and admired 
the muscle, kicked a clod of black earth into the stream and re- 
joiced in the swing of his leg. Then he smiled, a satyr-like grin 
wrinkling the cheek to the ear; then he took off his grey jacket, 
letting it drop upon the cypress roots; then he waded into the 
Chickahominy and began to swim to the further shore. The stream 
was deep but not swift; he was lank and lean but strong, and there 
was on the other side a pied piper piping of bestial sweetnesses. 
Several times arms and legs refused to codperate and there was 
some likelihood of a death by drowning, but each time instinct as- 
serted herself, nghted matters, and on he went. She pulled him out 
at last, on the southern bank, and he lay gasping among the tree 
roots, somewhat sobered by the drenching, but still on the whole a 


488 THE LONG ROLL 


courageous giant. He triumphed. “Yah! I got across! Goo’ — 
goo-’bye, ye darned fools squattin’ on the hillside!” 

He left the Chickahominy and moved through the woods. He 
went quite at random and with a peculiar gait, his eyes on the 
ground, looking for another haversack. But just hereabouts there 
showed nothing of the kind; it was a solemn wood of pines and 
cedars, not overtrampled as yet by war. Steve shivered, found a 
small opening where the sun streamed in, planted himself in the 
middle of the warmth, and presently toppled over. on the pine 
needles and went to sleep. He slept an hour or more, when he was 
waked by a party of officers riding through the wood. They stopped. 
Steve sat up and blinked. The foremost, a florid, side-whiskered, 
magnificently soldierly personage, wearing a very fine grey uniform 
and the stars of a major-general, addressed him. ‘‘What are you 
doing here, thir? Thraggling? — Anther me!” 

Steve saluted. “I ain’t the straggling kind, sir. Any man that 
says I straggle is a liar — exceptin’ the colonel, and he’s mistaken. 
I’m one of Stonewall’s men.” 

“Thtonewall! Ith Jackthon acwoss?”’ 

“They’re building a bridge. I don’t know if they air across yet. 
IT swum.” 

“What did you thwim for? Where’th your jacket? What’s your 
wegiment? — ‘65th Virginia?’ — Well, 65th Virginia, you appear to 
me a detherter —* 

Steve began to whine. “Gawd, general, I ain’t no deserter. If 
you'll jest have patience and listen, I kin explain —”’ 

“Time ’th lacking, thir. You get up behind one of my couriers, 
and if Jackthon’s crothed I’ll return you to your colonel. Take him 
up, O’Brien.”’ 

“General Magruder, sor, can’t I make him trot before me face 
like any other water-spaniel ? He’s wet and dhirty, sor.” 

“All wight, all wight, O’Brien. Come on, Gwiffith. Nine-Mile 
road and Thavage Thation!”’ 

The officers rode on. The courier regarded with disfavour the 
unlucky Steve. “Forward march, dhirty, desartin’, weak-kneed 
crayture that ye be! Thrott!” 

Beyond the pine wood the two came into an area which had been 
overtrampled. Indescribably dreary under the hot sun looked the 


THE RAILROAD GUN 489 


smouldering heaps and mounds of foodstuffs, the wrecked wagons, 
the abandoned picks and spades and shovels, the smashed camp 
equipage, broken kettles, pots and pans, the blankets, bedding, 
overcoats, torn and trampled in the mire, or piled together and a 
dull red fire slow creeping through the mass. Medicine-chests had 
been split by a blow of the axe, the vials shivered, and a black mire 
made by the liquids. Ruined weapons glinted in the sun between 
the furrows of a ruined cornfield; bags of powder, boxes of car- 
tridges, great chests of shot and shell showed, half submerged in a 
tortuous creek. At the edge of the field, there was a cannon spiked 
and overturned. Here, too, were dead horses, and here, too, were 
the black, ill-omened birds. There was a trench as well, a long trench 
just filled, with two or three little head boards bearing some legend. 
“Holy Virgin!” said the courier, “if I was a horse, a child, or a 
woman, I’d hate war with a holy hathred!”’ 

Steve whined at his stirrup. “Look a-here, sir, I can’t keep up! 
My foot’s awful sore. Gawd don’t look my way, if it ain’t! I ain’t 
desertin’. Who’d I desert to? They’ve all gone. I wanted a bath 
an’ I swum the river. The regiment’ll be over directly an’ I’ll re- 
join. Take my oath, I will!” 

“‘You trot along out of this plundering mess,’’ ordered the courier. 
“T’m thinking I’ll drop you soon, but it won’t be just here! Step 
lively now!” 

The two went on through the blazing afternoon sunshine, and in 
a straggling wood came upon a deserted field hospital. It was a 
ghastly place. The courier whistled reflectively, while the imagin- 
ative Steve felt a sudden sinking at the pit of the stomach, together 
with a cold dizziness and perspiration on the backs of his hands. 
The mind of the courier, striking out vigorously for some kind of a 
stimulant, laid hold of anger as the nearest efficient. “‘Bedad,”’ he 
cried, ‘‘ ye desartin’, dhirty hound! it’s right here I’ll be afther lavin’ 
ye, with the naked dead and the piles of arms and legs! Let go of my 
bridle or I’ll strike you with my pistol butt! Ughrrrrr! — Get out 
of this, Peggy!” 

They left, mare and man, in a cloud of pine needles and parched 
earth. Steve uttered something like a howl and went too, running 
without regard to an in truth not mythical sore foot. He ran after 
the disappearing courier, and when presently he reached a vast patch 


—s 


490 THE LONG ROLL 


of whitened raspberry bushes giving on a not wide and very dusty 
road and halted panting, it was settled forever that he could n’t go 
back to the plundering possibilities or to his original station by the 
Chickahominy, since to do so would be to pass again the abandoned 
field hospital. He kept his face turned from the river and somewhat 
to the east, and straggled on. A signpost told him that the dusty 
ribbon was the Nine-Mile road. Presently, among the berry bushes, 
he came upon a grey artilleryman sitting winding a strip of cloth 
around a wound in his leg. The artilleryman gave him further in- 
formation. ‘ Magruder’s moving this way. I was ahead with my 
battery, — Griffith’s brigade, — and some stinking sharpshooters 
sitting with the buzzards in the trees let fly at us! Result, I’ve got 
to hobble in at the end of the parade! — What’s the matter with 
your”’ 

“Captain,” said Steve, ‘‘asked for a volunteer to swim the river 
(we’re on the other side) and find out ’bout the currents. I swam 
it, and Gawd! jest then a Yankee battery opened and I could n’t 
get back! Regiment’ll be over after awhile I reckon.” _ 

The two sat down among the berry bushes. The road was visible, 
and upon it a great approaching pillar of dust. “Head of our col- 
umn,” said the artilleryman. ‘‘ Four roads and four pursuing forces, 
and if we can only all strike Mac at once there’ll be a battle that ’ll 
lay over Friday’s, and if he gets to his gunboats at all it will be ina 
damaged condition. Magruder’s bearing toward Savage Station, 
and if Jackson’s across the Chickahominy we might do for Fitz John 
Porter en 7 © 

‘““We might,” agreed Steve. “‘I’ll lie a little flatter, because the 
sun and the wetting has made my head ache. They’re fine troops.”’ 

The grey regiments went by, long swinging tread and jingling 
accoutrements. A major-general, riding at the head of the column, 
had the air of a Roman consul, round, strong, bullet head, which 
he had bared to the breeze that was springing up, close-cropped 
black hair, short black beard, high nose, bold eyes, a red in his 
cheeks. ‘‘That’s General Lafayette McLaws,” volunteered the 
artilleryman. “That’s General Kershaw with him. It’s Kershaw’s 
brigade. See the palmetto on the flags.” 

Kershaw’s went by. Behind came another high and thick dust 
cloud. ‘Cobb and Toombs and Barksdale and Kemper and 


THE RAILROAD GUN 491 


Semmes,” said the artilleryman. “Suppose we canter on? I’ll break 
a staff from those little heaven trees there. We might get to see the 
show, after all. York River Railroad’s just over there.” 

They went on, first to the ailanthus bushes, then, leaving the road 
to the troops, they struck across a ruined cornfield. Stalk and blade 
and tassel, and the intertwining small, pale-blue morning-glory, all 
were down. Gun-wheels, horses’ hoofs, feet of men had made of 
naught the sower’s pains. The rail fence all around was burning. 
In a furrow the two found a knapsack, and in it biscuit and jerked 
beef. “My Aunt Eliza! I was hungry!” said the artilleryman. 
“Know how the Israelites felt when they gathered manna off the 
ground!’’ Out of the cornfield they passed into a shaggy finger of 
forest. Suddenly firing broke out ahead. Steve started like a squir- 
rel. ‘“That’s close to us!” 

“There’s the railroad!” said the other. ‘“There’s Fair Oaks 
Station. They had entrenchments there, but the scouts say they 
evacuated them this morning. If they make a stand, reckon it’ll be 
at Savage Station. That musketry popping ’s down the line! Come 
on! I can go pretty fast!” 

He plied his staff. They came into another ragged field, narrow 
and sloping to a stretch of railroad track and the smoking ruins of a 
wooden station. Around were numerous earthworks, all abandoned. 
Beyond the station, on either side the road, grey troops were mass- 
ing. The firing ahead was as yet desultory. “ Just skirmishers pass- 
ing the time of day!” said the artilleryman. ‘Hello! What’re they 
doing on the railroad track? Well, I should think so!” 

Across the track, immediately below them, had been thrown by 
the retreating army a very considerable barricade. Broken wagons, 
felled trees, logs and a great mass of earth spanned it like a land- 
slide. Over and about it worked a grey company detailed to clear 
the way. From the edge of a wood, not many yards up the track, 
came an impatient chorus. “Hurry up, boys! hurry up! hurry up! 
We want to get by — want to get by —”’ 


“A railroad gun on a flat car placed — ” 


The artilleryman began to crow. “It’s Lieutenant Barry and the 
railroad gun! Siege piece run on a car. Iron penthouse over it, 
muzzle sticking out — engine behind —”’ 


492 THE LONG ROLL 


“ The Yankees skedaddle as though in haste 
But this thirty-two pounder howitzer imp 
It makes them halt and it makes them limp, 
This railroad gun on a flat car placed.” 


“Hurry up there! Hurry up! Hurry! Steam’s up! Coal’s precious! 
Can’t stay here burning diamonds like this all day!” 

“Come on!” said the artilleryman. “I can sit down and dig. 
We’ve got to clear that thing away in a hurry.” A shell from a hid- 
den blue battery burst over the working party. Steve held back. 
‘“‘Gawd, man, we can’t do no good! We’re both lame men. If we 
got back a little into the wood we could see fine. That’s better than 
fighting — when you’re all used up like us —”’ 

The artilleryman regarded him. ‘No, it is n’t better than fight- 
ing. I’ve been suspicioning you for some time, and I’ve stopped 
liking the company I’m in. All the same, I’m not going to drop it. 
Now you trot along in front. Being artillery I have n’t a gun any 
more than you have, but I’ve a stick, and there is n’t anything in the 
world the matter with my arm. It’s used to handling a sponge staff. 
Forward! trot!” 

On the other side the ruined station, on the edge of an old field, 
Magruder, with him McLaws, waited for the return of a staff 
officer whom he had sent to the Grapevine Bridge three miles away. 
The shell which had burst over the party clearing the railroad track 
was but the first of many. Concealed by the heavy woods, the guns 
of the Federal rearguard opened on the grey brigades. Kershaw and 
Griffith, to the right of the road, suffered most. Stephen D. Lee sent 
forward Carlton’s battery, and Kemper’s guns came to its aid. 
They took position in front of the centre and began to answer the 
blue guns. A courier arrived from the skirmishers thrown out 
toward the dense wood. ‘‘ Enemy in force and advancing, sir. Sum- 
ner and Franklin’s corps, say the scouts.” 

“All wight!” said Magruder. ‘Now if Jackthon’s over, we’ll 
cwush them like a filbert.”’ 

The staff officer returned. ‘Well, thir, well, thir? Ith General 
Jackthon acroth? Will he take them in the rear while I thrike here? 
— Bryan, you look intolerably thober! What ith it?” 

“The bridge will not be finished for two hours, sir. Two or three 
infantry companies have crossed by hook or crook, but I should say 
it would be morning before the whole force is over.” 


THE RAILROAD GUN 493 


“Damn! Well —”’ 

“T left my horse and got across myself, sir, and saw General Jack- 
son" 

“Well, well, well —” 

“‘He says, sir! ‘Tell General Magruder that I have other import- 
ant duties to perform’ ”’ — 

There was a dead silence. Then McLaws spoke with Roman di- 
rectness. “‘In my opinion there are two Jacksons. The one that 
came down here left the other one in the Valley.” 

A great shell came with a shriek and exploded, a fragment mor- 
tally wounding General Griffith at the head of the Mississippi bri- 
gade. The Mississippians uttered a loud cry of anger. Carleton’s 
battery thundered defiantly. Magruder drew a long breath. ‘‘ Well, 
gentlemen; philothophy to the rethcue! If we can’t bag the whole 
rearguard, we’ll bag what we can. General advanthe and drive 
them!” 

Back on the railroad, in the long shadows of the late afternoon, 
the working party cleared away the last layer of earth and log and 
stood back happy. ‘‘Come on, you old railroad gun, and stop your 
blaspheming! Should think the engine’d blush for you!” 

The railroad gun puffed up, cannoneers picturesquely draped 
where there was hold for foot or hand. There was a momentary 
pause, filled with an interchange of affectionate oaths and criticism. 
The lame artilleryman laid hold of the flat car. “Take me along, 
won’t you, and shuck meat my battery! Kemper’s, you know. Can’t 
I go, lieutenant?”’ 

“Yes, yes, climb on!” 

‘“‘And can’t my friend here go, too? He’s infantry, but he means 
well. He volunteered to swim the Chickahominy, and now he wants 
to get back so’s he can report to Stonewall Jackson. Sh! don’t deny 
it now. You’re too modest. Can’t he go, too, lieutenant?”’ 

“Yes, yes. Climb on! All right, Brown! Let her go!” 

Kershaw, Griffith, and Semmes’ brigades, advancing in line through 
light and shadow, wood and clearing, came presently into touch with 
the enemy. There followed a running fight, the Federals slowly 
retreating. Everywhere, through wood and clearing, appeared 
McClellan’s earthworks. Behind these the blue made stand, but at 
last from line to line the grey pressed them back. A deep cut ap- 


494 THE LONG ROLL 


peared, over which ran a railroad bridge; then woods, fields, a second 
ruined railroad station, beside which were burning cars filled with . 
quartermaster’s stores; beyond these a farmhouse, a peach orchard, 
and a field crossed by long rows of hospital tents. Before the farm- 
house appeared a strong Federal line of battle, and from every little 
eminence the blue cannon blazed. Kershaw charged furiously; the 
two lines clashed and clanged. Semmes’ brigade came into action 
on the right, Kemper’s battery supporting. Griffth’s, now Barks- 
dale’s — joined battle with a yell, the Mississippians bent on aveng- 
ing Griffith. The air filled with smoke, the roar of guns and the 
rattle of musketry. There occurred, in the late afternoon, a bloody 
fight between forces not large, and fairly matched. 

The engine pushing the railroad gun alternately puffed and 
shrieked through dark woodland and sunset-flooded clearing. A 
courier appeared, signalling with his hat. “General Magruder’s 
there by the bridge over the cut! Says, ‘Come on!’ Says, ‘Cross the 
bridge and get into battery in the field beyond.’ Says, ‘Hurry up!’ ” 

The siege-piece and the engine hurried. With a wild rattle and 
roar, the crew all yelling, black smoke everywhere, and the whistle 
screaming like a new kind of shell, the whole came out of the wood 
upon the railroad bridge. Instantly there burst from the blue bat- 
teries a tremendous, raking fire. Shot and shell struck the engine, 
the iron penthouse roof over the siege-piece, the flat car, the bridge 
itself. From the car and the bridge slivers were torn and hurled 
through the air. A man was killed, two others wounded, but engine 
and gun roared across. They passed Magruder standing on the bank. 
“Here we are, general, here we are! Yaaih! Yaaaih!”’ 

‘Th’ you are. Don’t thop- here! Move down the track a little. 
Other Richmond howitthers coming.” 

The other howitzers, four pieces, six horses to each, all in a gallop, 
captain ahead, men following in a mad run, whips crackling, drivers 
shouting, came all in thunder on the bridge and across. The blue 
shells flew like harpies, screaming, swooping, scattering ruin. A red 
gleam from the declining sun bathed the wild train. In a roar of 
sound the whole cleared the bridge and plunged from the track to 
the level field. Forward into battery, left oblique, march! 

McLaws on the right, hard pressed, sent to Magruder for rein- 
forcements. The 13th and 21st Mississippi answered. Kershaw, 


THE RAILROAD GUN 495 


supported by Semmes and Kemper, advancing under an iron hail 
by deserted camp and earthwork, ordered the 2d, 3d and 7th South 
Carolina to charge. They did so, with a high, ringing cry, through 
the sunset wood into the fields, by the farm and the peach orchard, 
where they and the blue lines stubbornly engaged. On both sides, 
the artillery came furiously into action. 

The long twilight faded, the stars began to show. The firing 
slackened, died to occasional sullen outbursts, then to silence. On 
both sides the loss was heavy; the action remained indecisive. The 
grey rested on the field; the blue presently took up again their line 
of retreat toward White Oak Swamp. They left in the hands of the 
grey their dead, several hundred prisoners, and twenty-five hundred 
men in hospital. In the hot and sultry night, dark, with presage of 
a storm, through a ruined country, by the light of their own burning 
stores, the blue column wound slowly on by the single road toward 
White Oak Swamp and its single bridge. The grey brigades lit their 
small camp-fires, gathered up the wounded, grey and blue, dug 
trenches for the dead, found food where they might and went hungry 
where there was none, answered to roll call and listened to the si- 
lence after many names, then lay down in field and wood beneath 
the gathering clouds. 

Some time between sunset and the first star Steve Dagg found 
himself, he hardly knew how, crouching in a line of pawpaw bushes 
bordering a shallow ravine. The clay upon his shirt and trousers 
made it seem probable that he had rolled down the embankment 
from the railroad gun to the level below. That he was out of breath, 
panting in hard painful gasps, might indicate that he had run like 
a hare across the field. He could not remember; anyhow here he 
was, a little out of hell, just fringing it as it were. Lying close to 
earth, between the smooth pawpaw stems, the large leaves making 
a night-time for him, Steve felt deadly sick. “O Gawd! why’d I 
volunteer in, seein’ I can’t volunteer out?’’ Behind him he heard 
the roaring of the guns, the singing of the minies. A chance shell 
went over his head, dug itself into the soil at the bottom of the 
ravine, and exploded. The earth came pattering upon the pawpaw 
leaves. Steve curled up like a hedgehog. “O Gawd! I ain’t got a 
friend in the world. Why didn’t I stay on Thunder Run and marry 
Lucinda Heard ?” 


496 THE LONG ROLL 


At dark the guns ceased. In the silence his nausea lessened and 
the chill sweat dried upon him. He lay quiet for awhile, and then he 
parted the pawpaw bushes and crept out. He looked over his 
shoulder at the field of battle. ‘“‘I ain’t going that-a-way and meet 
that gunner again — damn him to everlasting hell!”” He looked 
across the ravine toward the west, but a vision came to him of the 
hospital in the wood, and of how the naked dead men and the severed 
legs and arms might stir at night. He shivered and grew sick again. 
Southward ? There wasa glare upon all that horizon and a sound 
of distant explosions. The Yankees were sweeping through the 
woods that way, and they might kill him on sight without waiting 
for him to explain. A grey army was also over there, — Lee and 
Longstreet and A. P. Hill. He was as afraid of the grey as of the 
blue; after the railroad gun he was afraid of a shadow. Finally, he 
turned northward toward the Chickahominy again. 

The night, so dark and hot, presently became darker by reason of 
masses of clouds rising swiftly from the horizon and blotting out the 
stars. They hung low, they pressed heavily, beneath them a sul- 
phur-tainted and breathless air. Lightnings began to flash, thunder 
tomutter. “Yah!” whimpered Steve. “I’m going to get wet again! 
It’s true. Everything’s agin me.” 

He came again upon the swampy margin of the Chickahominy. 
It was wide, threaded by motionless waters, barred and banded 
with low-growing swamp shrubs, set with enormously tall and 
solemn trees. Steve, creeping between protruding roots, heard a 
screech owl in the distance. It cried and cried, but then the thunder 
rolled more loudly and drowned its hooting. He came flush with 
the dark stretch of the river. “Gawd, do I want to get across, or do 
I want to stay here? I wish I was dead — no, I don’t!” He faced 
the lightning. ‘‘Gawd, that was jes’ a mistake — don’t take any 
notice of it, please. — Yaaah!” He had set his foot on a log, which 
gave beneath it and sank into deep water. With a screech like the 
owl’s he drew back and squeezed himself, trembling, between the 
roots of a live-oak. He concluded that he would stay here until the 
dawn. 

The storm drew nearer, with long lightnings and thunder that 
crashed and rolled through the swamp. A vivid flash, holding a 
second or more, showed the stretch of the river, and several hundred 


THE RAILROAD GUN 497 


yards above Steve’s nook a part of a high railroad bridge. The gaunt 
trestle ran out past midstream, then stopped, all the portion toward 
the northern shore burned away. It stood against the intensely lit 
sky and stream like the skeleton of some antediluvian monster, then 
vanished into Stygian darkness. The thunder crashed at once, an 
ear-splitting clap followed by long reverberations. As these died, 
in the span of silence before should come the next flash and crash, 
Steve became conscious of another sound, dull and distant at first, 
then nearer and rushingly loud. ‘Train on the track down there! 
What in hell — It can’t cross!’’ He stood up, held bya sapling, and 
craned his neck to look up the river. A great flash showed the 
bridge again. ‘‘ Must be Yankees still about here — last of the rear- 
guard we’ve been fighting. What they doing with the train? They 
must have burned the bridge themselves! Gawd!” 

A wildly vivid orange flash lit water, wood and sky, and the gaunt 
half of a bridge, stopping dead short in the middle of the Chicka- 
hominy. The thunder crashed and rolled, then out of that sound 
grew another — the noise of a rushing train. Something huge and 
dark roared from the wooded banks out upon the bridge. It belched 
black smoke mingled with sparks; behind it were cars, and these were 
burning. The whole came full upon the broken bridge. It swayed 
beneath the weight; but before it could fall, and before the roaring 
engine reached the gap, the flames of the kindled cars touched the 
huge stores of ammunition sent thus to destruction by the retreat- 
ing column. In the night, over the Chickahominy, occurred a rend- 
ing and awful explosion. . . . Steve, coming to himself, rose to his 
knees in the black mire. The lightning flashed, and he stared with a 
contorted face. The bridge, too, was gone. There was only the 
churned water, filled with scantlings and torn branches of trees. The 
rain was falling,a great hissing sweep of rain, and the wind howled 
beneath the thunder. Steve turned blindly; he did not know where 
he was going, but he had a conviction that the river was rising and 
would come after him. A hundred yards from the water, in the mid- 
night wood, as he hurried over earth that the rain was fast turning 
into morass, he stumbled over some obstacle and fell. Putting out his 
hands, they came flat against a dead man’s face. He rose and fled 
with a screech, southwardly now, in the direction of White Oak 
Swamp. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 


son’s fourteen brigades crossed the Chickahominy, the 
movement occupying a great part of the night. Dawn of the 
thirtieth found the advance at Savage Station. 

The storm in the night had swelled the myriad creeks, and ex- 
tended all morasses. The roads were mud, the wild tangles of under- 

-wood held water like a sponge. But the dawn was glorious, with 
carmine and purple towers and the coolest fresh-washed purity of 
air and light. Major-General Richard Ewell, riding at the head of 
his division, opined that it was as clear as the plains. A reconnoi- 
tring party brought him news about something or other to the east- 
ward. He jerked his head, swore reflectively, and asked where was 
““Old Jackson.” 

“He rode ahead, sir, to speak to General Magruder.” 

“Well, you go, Nelson, and tell him — No, you go, Major Staf- 
ford.” 

Stafford went, riding through the cool, high glory of the morning. 
He found Jackson and Magruder at the edge of the peach orchard. 
All around were Magruder’s troops, and every man’s head was 
turned toward the stark and dust-hued figure on the dust-hued nag. 
The first had come from the Valley with a towering reputation, nor 
indeed did the last lack bards to sing of him. Whatever tarn cap the 
one had worn during the past three days, however bewildering had 
been his inaction, his reputation held. This was Jackson. . . . There 
must have been some good reason . . . this was Stonewall Jackson. 
Magruder’s brigades cheered him vehemently, and he looked at 
them unsmiling, with a mere motion of his hand toward the rusty 
old cadet cap. Magruder, magnificently soldierly, with much of 
manner and rich colour, magnanimously forgetful this morning of 
“other important duties” and affably debonair though his eyelids 

dropped for want of sleep, came gradually to halt in his fluent 


TT * Grapevine Bridge being at last rebuilt, Stonewall Jack- 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 499 


speech. — ‘“‘Weally, you can’t talk forever to a potht! If thilenthe 
be golden he ith the heavietht weight of hith time.” — Jackson 
gathered up his reins, nodded and rode off, the troops cheering as 
he went by. 

Stafford, coming up with him, saluted and gave his message. Jack- 
son received it with impassivity and rode on. Conceiving it to be 
his duty to attend an answer, the staff officer accompanied him, 
though a little in the rear. Here were an aide and a courier, and the 
three rode silently behind their silent chief. At the Williamsburg 
road there came a halt. Jackson checked Little Sorrel, and sat look- 
ing toward Richmond. Down the road, in the sunrise light, came at 
a canter a knot of horsemen handsomely mounted and equipped, the 
one in front tall and riding an iron-grey. Stafford recognized the 
commander-in-chief. Jackson sat very still, beneath a honey lo- 
cust. The night before, in a wood hard by, the 17th Mississippi 
had run into a Federal brigade. The latter had fired, at point 
blank, a withering volley. Many a tall Mississippian had fallen. 
Now in the early light their fellow soldiers had gone seeking them 
in the wood, drawn them forth, and laid them in a row in the wet 
sedge beside the road. Nearly every man had been shot through 
the brain. They lay ghastly, open-eyed, wet with rain, staring at 
the cool and pure concave of the sky. Two or three soldiers were 
moving slowly up and down the line, bent on identifications. Pre- 
sumably Jackson was aware of that company of the dead, but their 
presence could not be said to disturb him. He sat with his large 
hands folded over the saddle-bow, with the forage cap cutting all 
but one blue-grey gleam of his eyes, still as stone wall or moun- 
tain or the dead across the way. As the horsemen came nearer 
his lips parted. “‘That is General Lee?”’ 

“Yes, general.” 

cc Good! 93 

Lee’s staff halted; Lee himself came on, checked the iron-grey, 
dismounted, and walked toward the honey locust. Jackson swung 
himself stiffly out of the saddle and stepped forward. The two met. 
Lee stretched out his hand, said something in his gracious voice. 
The piteous row of dead men, with their open eyes, caught his glance. 
He drew his brows together, pressed his lips hard, parted them in a 
sigh and went on with his speech. The two men, so different in 


500 THE LONG ROLL 


aspect, talked not long together. The staff could not hear what 
was said, but Lee spoke the most and very earnestly. Jackson 
nodded, said, ‘‘Good!” several times, and once, “It is in God’s 
hands, General Lee!” 

The courier holding Traveller brought him up. Lee mounted, 
tarried, a great and gallant figure, a moment longer, then rode 
toward Magruder at the peach orchard. His staff followed, saluting 
Stonewall Jackson as they passed. He, too, remounted in his stiff 
and awkward fashion, and turned Little Sorrel’s head down the 
Williamsburg road. Behind him now, in the clear bright morning, 
could be heard the tramp of his brigades. Stafford pushed his horse 
level with the sorrel. “Your pardon, general, but may I ask if 
there’s any order for General Ewell —”’ 

“There is none, sir.”’ 

“Then shall I return?” 

“No, you will wait, sir. From the cross-roads I may send direc- 
tions.”’ 

They rode on by wood and field. Overhead was a clear, high, 
azure sky; no clouds, but many black sailing specks. Around, on the 
sandy road, and in the shaggy, bordering growth, were witnesses 
enough to the Federal retreat — a confused medley of abandoned 
objects. Broken and half-burned wagons appeared, like wreckage 
from a storm. There did not lack dead or dying horses, nor, here 
and there, dead or wounded men. In the thicker woods or wander- 
ing through the ruined fields appeared, forlornly, stragglers from 
the Federal column. D. H. Hill, leading the grey advance, swept up 
hundreds of these. From every direction spirals of smoke rose into 
the crystal air,— barns and farmhouses, mills, fences, hayricks, and 
monster heaps of Federal stores set on fire in that memorable 
‘change of base.’’ Forall the sunshine of the June morning, the rain- 
washed air, the singing birds in the jewelled green of the forest, there 
was something in the time and place inexpressibly sinister and sad. 

Or so thought Maury Stafford, riding silently with the aide and 
the courier. At Gaines’s Mill he had won emphatic praise for a cool 
and daring ride across the battlefield, and for the quick rallying and 
leading into action of a command whose officers were all down. With 
Ewell at Dispatch Station, he had volunteered for duty at the 
crossing of the Chickahominy, and in a hand-to-hand fight with a 


WHITE OAK SWAMP sor 


retiring Federal regiment he and his detachment had acquitted 
themselves supremely well. As far as this warfare went, he had 
reason to be satisfied. But he was not so, and as he rode he thought 
the morning scene of a twilight dreariness. He had no enthusiasm 
for war. In every aspect of life, save one, that he dealt with, he 
carried a cool and level head, and he thought war barbarous and its 
waste a great tragedy. Martial music and earth-shaking charges 
moved him for a moment, as they moved others for an hour or a 
day. The old, instinctive response passed with swiftness, and he 
settled to the base of a steadfast conclusion that humanity turned 
aside to the jungle many times too often in a century. That, indi- 
vidually, he had turned into a certain other allied jungle, he was 
conscious — not sardonically conscious, for here all his judgment 
was warped, but conscious. His mind ranged in this jungle with 
an unhappy fury hardly modern. 

As he rode he looked toward Richmond. He knew, though he 
_ scarcely knew how he knew, that Judith Cary was there. He had 
himself meant to ride to Richmond that idle twenty-eighth. Then 
had come the necessity of accompanying Ewell to Dispatch Station, 
and his chance was gone. The Stonewall Brigade had been idle 
enough. . . . Perhaps, the colonel of the 65th had gone... . It 
was a thick and bitter jungle, and he gathered every thorn within 
it to himself and smelled of every poisonous flower. 

The small, silent cavalcade came to a cross-roads. Jackson 
stopped, sitting Little Sorrel beneath a tall, gaunt, lightning-black- 
ened pine. The three with him waited a few feet off. Behind them 
they heard the on-coming column; D. H. Hill leading, then Jack- 
son’s own division. The sun was above the treetops, the sky cloud- 
less, all the forest glistening. The minutes passed. Jackson sat like 
a stone. At last, from the heavy wood pierced by the cross-road, came 
a rapid clatter of hoofs. Munford appeared, behind him fifty of his 
cavalry. The fifty checked their horses; the leader came on and 
saluted. Jackson spoke in the peculiar voice he used when displeased. 
“Colonel Munford, I ordered you to be here at sunrise.” 

Munford explained. “‘The men were much scattered, sir. They 
don’t know the country, and in the storm last night and the thick 
wood they could n’t see their horses’ ears. They had nothing to eat 


and —”’ 


502 THE LONG ROLL 


He came to a pause. No amount of good reasons ever for long 
rolled fluently off the tongue before Jackson. He spoke now, still 
in the concentrated monotony of his voice of displeasure. “Yes, 
sir. But, colonel, I ordered you to be here at sunrise. Move on with 
your men. If you meet the enemy drive in his pickets, and if you 
want artillery Colonel Crutchfield will furnish you.” 

Munford moved on, his body of horse increasing in size as the 
lost troopers emerged in twos and threes or singly from the forest 
and turned down the road to join the command. The proceeding 
gave an effect of disordered ranks. Jackson beckoned the courier. 
“Go tell Colonel Munford that his men are straggling badly.” 

The courier went, and presently returned. Munford was with 
him. “General, I thought I had best come myself and explain — 
they are n’t straggling. We were all separated in the dark night 
ana 

“Yes, sir. But I ordered you to be here at sunrise. Move on now, 
and drive in the enemy’s pickets, and if you want artillery Colonel 
Crutchfield will furnish you.” 

Munford and the 2d Virginia went on, disappearing around a 
bend in the road. The sound of the artillery coming up was now 
loud in the clear air. Jackson listened a moment, then left the 
shadow of the pine, and with the two attending officers and the 
courier resumed the way to White Oak Swamp. 

Brigade by brigade, twenty-five thousand men in grey passed 
Savage Station and followed Stonewall Jackson. The air was fresh, 
the troops in spirits. Nobody was going to let McClellan get to the 
James, after all! The brigades broke into song. They laughed, they 
joked, they cheered every popular field officer as he passed, they 
genially discussed the heretofore difficulties of the campaign and 
the roseate promise of the day. They knew it was the crucial day; 
that McClellan must be stopped before sunset or he would reach 
the shelter of his gunboats. They were in a Fourth of July humour; 
they meant to make the day remembered. Life seemed bright again 
and much worth while. They even grudgingly agreed that there was 
a curious kind of attractiveness about all this flat country, and the 
still waters, and the very tall trees, and labyrinthine vivid green 
undergrowth. Intermittent fevers had begun to appear, but, one 
and all, the invalids declared that this was their good day. ‘Shucks! 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 503 


What’s a little ague? Anyhow, it’ll go away when we get back to 
the Valley. Going back to the Valley? Well, we should think so! 
This country’s got an eerie kind of good looks, and it raises sweet 
potatoes all right, but for steady company give us mountains! We'll 
drop McClellan in one of these swamps, and we’ll have a review at 
the fair grounds at Richmond so’s all the ladies can see us, and then 
we'll go back to the Valley pike and Massanutton and Mr. Commis- 
sary Banks! They must be missing us awful. Somebody sing some- 
thing, — | 
“Old Grimes is dead, that good old man, 
Whom we shall see no more! 


He wore a grey Confederate coat 
All buttoned down before —” 


“Don’t like it that way? All right —” 


“‘ He wore a blue damn-Yankee coat 
All buttoned down before — ”’ 


The Stonewall Brigade passed a new-made grave in a small grave- 
yard, from which the fence had been burned. A little further on they 
came to a burned smithy; the blacksmith’s house beside it also a 
ruin, black and charred. On astone, between two lilac-bushes, sat a 
very old man. Beside him stood a girl, a handsome creature, dark 
and bright-cheeked. “Send them to hell, boys, send them to hell!” 
quavered the old man. The girl raised a sweet and vibrant voice: 
“Send them to hell, men, send them to hell!” 

““We’ll do our best, ma’am, we’ll do our best!’’ answered the 
Stonewall. 

The sun mounted high. They were moving now through thick 
woods, broken by deep creeks and bits of swamp. All about were 
evidences enough that an army had travelled before them, and that 
that army was exceedingly careless of its belongings. All manner 
of impediments lay squandered; waste and ruin were everywhere. 
Sometimes the men caught an odour of burning meat, of rice and 
breadstuffs. In a marshy meadow a number of wrecked, canvas- 
topped wagons showed like a patch of mushrooms, giant and dingy. 
In a forest glade rested like a Siegfried smithy an abandoned travel- 
ling forge. Camp-kettles hacked in two were met with, and boxes 
of sutlers’ wares smashed to fragments. The dead horses were 


504 THE LONG ROLL 


many, and there was disgust with the buzzards, they rose or settled 
in such clouds. The troops, stooping to drink from the creeks, com- 
plained that the water was foul. 

Very deep woods appeared on the horizon. “Guide says that’s 
White Oak Swamp! — Guide says that’s White Oak Swamp!” 
Firing broke out ahead. “Cavalry rumpus! — Hello! Artillery 
butting in, too! — everybody but us! Well, boys, I always did 
think infantry a mighty no-’count, undependable arm — infan- 
try of the Army of the Valley, anyway! God knows the moss has 
been growing on us for a week!” 

Munford sent back a courier to Jackson, riding well before the 
head of the column. “ Bridge is burned, sir. They’re in strong force 
on the other side —”’ 

““Good!” said Jackson. ‘Tell Colonel Crutchfield to bring up 
the guns.” 

He rode on, the aide, the courier, and Maury Stafford yet with 
him. They passed a deserted Federal camp and hospital, and came 
between tall trees and through dense swamp undergrowth to a small 
stream with many arms. It lay still beneath the blue sky, overhung 
by many a graceful, vine-draped tree. The swamp growth stretched 
for some distance on either side, and through openings in the foliage 
the blue glint of the arms could be seen. To the right there was 
some cleared ground. In front the road stopped short. The one 
bridge had been burned by the retreating Federal rearguard. Two 
blue divisions, three batteries — in all over twenty thousand men — 
now waited on the southern bank to dispute the White Oak 
Crossing. 

Stafford again pushed his horse beside Jackson’s. ‘“ Well, sir?” 

“T hunted once through this swamp, general. There is an old 
crossing near the bridge —”’ 

“Passable for cavalry, sir?” 

“Passable by cavalry and infantry, sir. Even the guns might 
somehow be gotten across.”’ 

“T asked, sir, if it was passable for cavalry.” 

gle Cas 

Jackson turned to his aide. “Go tell Colonel Crutchfield I want 
to see him.” ji 

Crutchfield appeared. “Where are your guns, colonel ?” 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 505 


“General, their batteries on the ridge over there command the 
road, and the thick woods below their guns are filled with sharp- 
shooters. I want to get the guns behind the crest of the hill on this 
side, and I am opening a road through the wood over there. They’ll 
be up directly — seven batteries, Carter’s, Hardaway’s, Nelson’s, 
Rhett’s, Reilly’s, and Balthis’. We’ll open then at a thousand yards, 
and we’ll take them, I think, by surprise.” 

“Very good, colonel. That is all.” 

The infantry began to arrive. Brigade by brigade, as it came up, 
turned to right or to left, standing under arms in the wood above the 
White Oak Swamp. As the Stonewall Brigade came, under tall trees 
and over earth that gave beneath the feet, flush with the stream 
itself, the grey guns, now in place upon the low ridge to the right, 
opened, thirty-one of them, with simultaneous thunder. Crutch- 
field’s manceuvre had not been observed. The thirty-one guns blazed 
without warning, and the blue artillery fell into confusion. The Par- 
rotts blazed in turn, four times, then they limbered up in haste and 
left the ridge. Crutchfield sent Wooding’s battery tearing down the 
slope to the road immediately in front of the burned bridge. Wood- 
ing opened fire and drove out the infantry support from the oppo- 
site forest. Jackson, riding toward the stream, encountered Mun- 
ford. ‘Colonel, move your men over the creek and take those guns.” 

Munford looked. ‘I don’t know that we can cross it, sir.” 

“Yes, you can cross it, colonel. Try.” 

Munford and a part of the 2d Virginia dashed in. The stream 
was in truth narrow enough, and though it was deep here, with a 
shifting bottom, and though the débris from the ruined bridge made 
it full of snares, the horsemen got across and pushed up the shore 
toward the guns. A thick and leafy wood to the right leaped fire — 
another and unsuspected body of blue infantry. The echoes were 
yet ringing when, from above, an unseen battery opened on the luck- 
less cavalry. The blue rifles cracked again, the horses began to rear 
and plunge, several men were hit. There was nothing to do but to 
get somehow back to the north bank. Munford and his men pushed 
out of the rain of iron, through the wood for some distance down the 
stream, and there recrossed, not without difficulty. 

The thirty-one guns shelled the wood which had last spoken, and 
drove out the skirmishers with whom it was filled. These took ref- 


506 THE LONG ROLL 


uge in another deep and leafy belt still commanding the stream and 
the ruined causeway. A party of grey pioneers fell to work to rebuild 
the bridge. From the crest on the southern side behind the deep 
foliage two Federal batteries, before unnoted, opened on the grey 
cannoneers. Wooding, on the road before the bridge, had to fall 
back. Under cover of the guns the blue infantry swarmed again into 
the wood. Shell and bullet hissed and pattered into the water by 
the abutments of the ruined bridge. The working party drew back. 
“Damnation! They must n’t fling them minies round loose like 
that!” 

Wright’s brigade of Huger’s division came up. Wright made his 
report. “We tried Brackett’s ford a mile up stream, sir. Could n’t 
manage it. Got two companies over by the skin of our teeth. They 
drove in some pickets on the other side. Road through the swamp 
over there covered by felled trees. Beyond is a small meadow and 
beyond that rising ground, almost free of trees. There are Yankee 
batteries on the crest, and a large force of infantry lying along the 
side of the ridge. They command the meadow and the swamp.” 

So tall were the trees, so thick the undergrowth, so full the mid- 
summer foliage that the guns, thundering at each other across the 
narrow stream, never saw their antagonists. Sharpshooters and 
skirmishers were as hidden. Except as regarded the pioneers striv- 
ing with the bridge, neither side could see the damage that was done. 
The noise was tremendous, echoing loudly from the opposing low 
ridges and rolling through the swamp. The hollow filled with smoke; 
above the treetops a dull saffron veil was drawn across the sky. The 
firing was without intermission, a monotonous thunder, beneath 
which the working party strove spasmodically at the bridge, the 
cavalry chafed toand fro, and the infantry, filling all the woods and 
the little clearings to the rear, began to swear. “Is it the Red Sea 
down there? Why can’t we cross without a bridge? Nobody’s going 
to get drowned! Ain’t more’n a hundred men been drowned since 
this war began! O Great Day in the Morning! I’m tired of doing 
nothing!” 

General Wade Hampton of D. H. Hill’s division, leaving his 
brigade in a pine wood, went with his son and with an aide, Rawlins 
Lowndes, on a reconnoitring expedition of his own. He was a 
woodsman and hunter, with experience of swamps and bayous. 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 507 


Returning, he sought out Jackson, and found him sitting on a fallen 
pine by the roadside near the slowly, slowly mending bridge. Hamp- 
ton dismounted and made his report. ‘‘We got over, three of us, 
general, a short way above. It was n’t difficult. The stream’s clear 
of obstructions there and has a sandy bottom. We could see through 
the trees on the other side. There’s a bit of level, and a hillside 
covered with troops — a strong position. But we got across the 
stream, sir.” 

“Yes. Can you make a bridge there?” 

“T can make one for infantry, sir. Not, I think, for the artillery. 
Cutting a road would expose our position.” 

“Very good. Make the bridge, general.” 

Hampton’s men cut saplings and threw a rude foot-bridge across 
the stream where he had traversed it. He returned and reported. 
“They are quiet and unsuspecting beyond, sir. The crossing would 
be slow, and there may be an accident, but cross we certainly can.” 

Jackson, still seated on the fallen pine, sat as though he had been 
there through eternity, and would remain through eternity. The 
gun thundered, the minies sang. One of the latter struck a tree 
above his head and severed a leafy twig. It came floating down, 
touched his shoulder like an accolade and rested on the pine needles 
by his foot. He gave it no attention, sitting like a graven image with 
clasped hands, listening to the South Carolinian’s report. Hampton 
ceased to speak and waited. It was the height of the afternoon. He 
stood three minutes in silence, perhaps, then glanced toward the man 
on the log. Jackson’s eyes were closed, his head slightly lifted. 
“Praying?” thought the South Carolinian. ‘Well, there’s a time 
for everything —”’ Jackson opened his eyes, drew the forage cap 
far down over them, and rose from the pine. The other looked for 
him to speak, but he said nothing. He walked a little way down the 
road and stood among the whistling minies, looking at the slowly, 
slowly building bridge. 

Hampton did as Wright and Munford had done before him — 
went back to his men. D.H. Hill, after an interview of his own, had 
retired to the artillery. “Yes, yes, Rhett, go ahead! Do something 
— makea noise — dosomething! Infantry’s kept home from school 
to-day — measles, I reckon, or maybe it’s lockjaw!”’ 

About three o’clock there was caught from the southward, be- 


508 THE LONG ROLL 


tween the loud wrangling of the batteries above White Oak, another. 
sound, — first two or three detonations occurring singly, then a pro- 
longed and continuous roar. The batteries above White Oak Swamp, 
the sharpshooters and skirmishers, the grey chafing cavalry, the 
grey masses of unemployed infantry, all held breath and listened. 
The sound was not three miles away, and it was the sound of the 
crash of long battle-lines. There was a curious movement among the 
men nearest the grey general-commanding. With their bodies bent 
forward, they looked his way, expecting short, quick orders. He 
rested immobile, his eyes just gleaming beneath the down-drawn 
cap, Little Sorrel cropping the marsh grass beside him, Munford, 
coming up, ventured a remark. ‘‘General Longstreet or General 
A. P. Hill has joined with their centre, I suppose, general? The 
firing is very heavy.” 

“Yes. The troops that have been lying before Richmond. General 
Lee will see that they do what is right.” 

Stafiord, near him, spoke again. ‘‘The sound comes, I think, sir, 
from a place called Glendale — Glendale or Frayser’s Farm.”’ 

“Yes, sir,” said Jackson; ‘‘very probably.” 

The thunder never lessened. Artillery and infantry, Franklin’s 
corps on the south bank of White Oak, began again to pour an iron 
hail against the opposing guns and the working party at the bridge, 
but in every interval between the explosions from these cannon 
there rolled louder and louder the thunder from Frayser’s Farm. 
A sound like a grating wind in a winter forest ran through the idle 
grey brigades. “It’s A. P. Hill’s battle again! — A. P. Hill or Long- 
street! Magruder and Huger and Holmes and A. P. Hill and 
Longstreet — and we out of it again, on the wrong side of White 
Oak Swamp! And they’re looking for us to help — Wish I was 
dead!” 

The 65th Virginia had its place some distance up the stream, in a 
tangled wood by the water. Facing southward, it held the extreme 
right; beyond it only morass, tall trees, swaying masses of vine. On 
the left an arm of the creek, thickly screened by tree and bush, 
divided it from the remainder of the brigade. Jt rested in semi- 
isolation, and its ten companies stared in anger at the narrow stream 
and the deep woods beyond, listening to the thunder of Longstreet 
and A. P. Hill’s unsupported attack and the answering roar of the 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 509 


Federal 3d Army Corps. It was a sullen noise, deep and unin- 
termittent. The 65th, waiting for orders, could have wept as the 
orders did not come. ‘‘Get across? Well, if General Jackson would 
just give us leave to try! —Oh, hell! listen to that! — Colonel, can’t 
you do something for us? — Where’s the colonel gone?” 

Cleave was beyond their vision. He had rounded a little point of 
land and now, Dundee’s hoofs in water, stood gazing at the darkly 
wooded opposite shore. He stood a moment thus, then spoke to the 
horse, and they entered the stream. It was not deep, and though 
there were obstructions, old stakes and drowned brushwood, Cleave 
and Dundee crossed. The air was full of booming sound, but there 
was no motion in the wood into which they rose from the water. 
All its floor was marshy, water in pools and threads, a slight growth 
of cane, and above, the tall and solemn trees. Cleave saw that there 
was open meadow beyond. Dismounting, he went noiselessly to the 
edge of the swamp. An open space, covered with some low growth; 
beyond it a hillside. Wood and meadow and hill, all lay quiet and 
lonely in the late sunlight. 

He went back to Dundee, remounted, passed again through the 
sombre wood, over the boggy earth, entered the water and re- 
crossed. Turning the little point of the swamp, he rode before his 
regiment on his way to find Winder. His men greeted him. ‘Colonel, 
if you could just get us over there we’d do anything in the world for 
you! This weeping-willow place is getting awful hard to bear! Look 
at Dundee! Even he’s drooping his head. You know we’d follow 
you through hell, sir; and if you could just manage it so’s we 
could follow you through White Oak Swamp —”’ 

Cleave passed the arm of the creek separating the 65th from the 
rest of the brigade, and asked of Winder from the first troops beyond 
the screen of trees. “‘General Winder has ridden down to the bridge 
to see General Jackson.” 

Cleave, following, found his leader indeed before Jackson, just 
finishing his representations whatever they were, and somewhat 
perturbed by the commanding general’s highly developed silence. 
This continuing unbroken, Winder, after an awkward minute of 
waiting, fell a little back, a flush on his cheeks and his lips hard to- 
gether. The action disclosed Cleave, just come up, his hand check- 
ing Dundee, his grey eyes earnestly upon Jackson. When the latter 


510 THE LONG ROLL 


spoke, it was not to the brigadier but to the colonel of the 6sth. 
‘‘Why are you not with your regiment, sir?” 

“T left it but a moment ago, sir, to bring information I thought 
it my duty to bring.” 

“What information?” 

“The 65th is on General Winder’s extreme right, sir. The stream 
before it is fordable.”’ 

“How do you know, sir?”’ 

“T forded it. The infantry could cross without much difficulty. 
The 65th would be happy, sir, to lead the way.” 

Winder opened his lips. ‘‘The whole Stonewall Brigade is ready, 
sir.” 

Jackson, without regarding, continued to address himself to 
Cleave. His tone had been heard before by the latter — in his own 
case on the night of the twenty-seventh as well as once before, and 
in the case of others where there had been what was construed as 
remonstrance or negligence or disobedience. He had heard him 
speak so to Garnett after Kernstown. The words were simple enough 
— they always were. ‘You will return to your duty, sir. It lies 
where your regiment is, and that is not here. Go!” 

Cleave obeyed. The ford was there. His regiment might have 
crossed, the rest of the Stonewall following. Together they might 
traverse the swamp and the bit of open, pass the hillside, and strike 
Franklin upon the flank, while, brigade by brigade, the rest of the 
division followed by that ford. Rout Franklin, and push forward 
to help A. P. Hill. It had appeared his duty to give the inform- 
ation he was possessed of. He had given it, and his skirts were 
cleared. There was anger in him as he turned away; he had a com- 
pressed lip, a sparkling eye. Not till he turned did he see Stafford, 
sitting his horse in the shadow behind Jackson. The two men stared 
full at each other for a perceptible moment. But Stafford’s face 
was in the shadow, and as for Cleave his mind was full of anger 
for the tragedy of the inaction. At the moment he gave small at- 
tention to his own life, its heights or depths, past or future. He saw 
Stafford, but he could not be said to consider him at all. He turned 
from the road into the wood, and pushed the great bay over spongy 
ground toward the isolated 65th. Stafford saw that he gave him no 
thought, and it angered him. On the highroad of his life it would not 


WHITE OAK SWAMP gir 


have done so, but he had left the road and was lost in the jungle. 
There were few things that Richard Cleave might do which would 
not now work like madness on the mind astray in that place. 

The cannonading over White Oak Swamp continued, and the 
sound of the battle of Frayser’s Farm continued. On a difficult and 
broken ground Longstreet attacked, driving back McCall’s divi- 
sion. McCall was reinforced and Longstreet hard pressed. Lee 
loosed A. P. Hill, and the battle became furious. He looked for 
Jackson, but Jackson was at White Oak Swamp; for Huger, but a 
road covered with felled trees delayed Huger; for Magruder, but in 
the tangle of wood and swamp Magruder, too, went astray; for 
Holmes, but Fitz John Porter held Holmes in check. Longstreet and 
A. P. Hill strove unsupported, fifty thousand grey troops in hearing 
of their guns. The battle swayed to and fro, long, loud, and san- 
guinary, with much hand-to-hand work, much use of bayonets, and, 
over all, a shriek of grape and canister. 

Back on White Oak Swamp, Franklin on the southern side, Jack- 
son on the northern, blue and grey alike caught the noise of battle. 
They themselves were cannonading loudly and continuously. One 
Federal battery used fifteen hundred rounds. The grey were hardly 
less lavish. Not much damage was done except to the trees. The 
trough through which crept the sluggish water was filled with smoke. 
It drifted through the swamp and the woods and along the opposing 
hillsides. It drifted over and about the idle infantry, until one com- 
mand was hidden from another. 

Stonewall Jackson, seated on the stump of a felled oak, his sabre 
across his knees, his hands rigid upon it, his great booted feet 
squarely planted, his cap drawn low, sent the aide beside him with 
some order to the working party at the bridge. A moment later the 
courier went, too, to D. H. Hill, with a query about prisoners. The 
thunders continued, the smoke drifted heavily, veiling all move- 
ments. Jackson spoke without turning. “ Whoever is there —” 

No one was there at the moment but Maury Stafford. He came 
forward. “You will find the rst Brigade,” said Jackson. “Tell 
General Winder to move it nearer the stream. Tell him to cross from 
his right, with caution, a small reconnoitring party. Let it find out 
the dispositions of the enemy, return and report.” 

Stafford went, riding westward through the smoke-filled forest, 


512 THE LONG ROLL 


and came presently to the Stonewall Brigade and to Winder, walk- 
ing up and down disconsolately. “‘An order from General Jackson, 
sir. You will move your brigade nearer the stream. Also you will 
cross, from your right, with caution, a small reconnoitring party. It 
will discover the dispositions of the enemy, return and report.” 

“Very good,” said Winder. “I’ll move at once. The 65th is 
already on the brink — there to the right, beyond the swamp. Per- 
haps, you’ll take the order on to Colonel Cleave? — Very good! Tell 
him to send a picked squad quietly across and find out what he 
can. I hope to God there’!l come another order for us all to cross at 
its heels!” 

Stafford, riding on, presently found himself in a strip of bog and 
thicket and tall trees masking a narrow, sluggish piece of water. 
The brigade behind him was hidden, the regiment in front not yet 
visible. Despite the booming of the guns, there was here an effect 
of stillness. It seemed a lonely place. Stafford, traversing it slowly 
because the ground gave beneath his horse’s feet, became aware of 
a slight movement in a laurel thicket and of two eyes gleaming be- 
hind the leaves. He reined in his horse. ‘‘ What are you doing in 
there? Straggling or deserting? Come out!” There was a pause; 
then Steve Dagg emerged. “Major, I ain’t either stragglin’ or 
desertin’. I was just seperated —I got seperated last night. The 
regiment’s jes’ down there — I crept down an’ saw it jes’ now. I’m 
goin’ back an’ join right away — send me to hell if I ain’t! — though 
Gawd knows my foot’s awful sore —”’ 

Stafford regarded him closely. “‘I’ve seen you before. Ah, I 
remember! On the Valley pike, moving toward Winchester. . . 
Poor scoundrel!” 

Steve, his back against a swamp magnolia, undertook to show 
that he, too, remembered, and that gratefully. “Yes, sir. You 
saved me from markin’ time on a barrel-head, major — an’ my foot 
was sore — an’ I was n’t desertin’ that time any more’n this time — 
an’ I was as obleeged to you as I could be. The colonel’s awful hard 
on the men.” 

“Ts he ?” said Stafford gratingly. “They seem to like him.” - 

He sat his horse before the laurel thicket and despised himself for 
holding conference with this poor thief; or, rather, some fibre in his 
brain told him that, out of this jungle, if ever he came out of it, he 


WHITE OAK SWAMP cry 


would despise himself. Had he really done so now, he would have 
turned away. He did not so; he sat in the heart of the jungle and 
compared hatreds with Steve. 

The latter glanced upward a moment with his ferret eyes, then 
turned his head aside and spat. “If there’s any of my way of 
thinkin’ they don’t like him — But they’re all fools! Crept down 
through the swamp a little ago an’ heard it! ‘Colonel, get us 
across, somehow, won’t you? We'll fight like hell!’ ‘I can’t, men. 
I have n’t any orders.’ Yaah! I wish he’d take the regiment over 
without them, and then be court-martialled and shot for doing 
it!” Steve spat again. “Iseed long ago that you did n’t like him 
either, major. He gets along too fast —all the prizes come his 
way.” 

“Yes,”’ said Stafford, from the heart of the jungle. “‘They come 
his way. . . . And he’s standing there at the edge of the water, hop- 
ing for orders to cross.” 

Steve, beneath the swamp magnolia, had a widening of the lips. 
“Luck’s turned agin him one way, though. He’s out of favour with 
Old Jack. The regiment don’t know why, but it saw it mighty plain 
day before yesterday, after the big battle! Gawd knows I’d like to 
see him so deep in trouble he’d never get out — and so would you, 
major. Prizes would stop coming his way then, and he might lose 
those he has —”’ 

“Tf I entertain a devil,” said Stafford, “I’ll not be hypocrite 
enough to object to his conversation. Nor, if I take his suggestion, 
is there any sense in covering him with reprobation. So go your way, 
miserable imp! while I go mine!” 

But Steve kept up with him, half-running at his stirrup. “I got to 
rejoin, cause it’s jest off one battlefield on to another, and there ain’t 
nowhere else to go! This world’s a sickenin’ place for men like me. 
So I’ve got to rejoin. Ef there ’s ever anything I kin do for you, 
major. 

At the head of the dividing arm of the creek they heard behind 
them a horseman, and waited for a courier to come up. “ You are 
going on to the 65th?”’ 

“Yes, sir. I belong there. I was kept by General Winder for some 
special duty, and I’m just through it —”’ 

“T have an order,” said Stafford, “from General Winder to 


514 THE LONG ROLL 


Colonel Cleave. There are others to carry and time presses. [’ll 
entrust it to you. Listen now, and get it straight.” 

He gave an order. The courier listened, nodded energetically, re- 
peated it after him, and gathered up the reins. “JI am powerfully 
glad to carry that order, sir! It means ‘Cross,’ does n’t it ?” 

He rode off, southward to the stream, in which direction Steve 
had already shambled. Stafford returned, through wood and swamp, 
to the road by the bridge. Above and around the deep inner jungle 
his intellect worked. He knew that he had done a villainy; knew it 
and did not repent. A nature, fine enough in many ways, lay bound 
hand and foot, deep in miasmas and primal heat, captive to a mas- 
ter and consuming passion. To create a solitude where he alone 
might reach one woman’s figure, he would have set a world afire. He 
rode back now, through the woods, to a general commanding who 
never forgave nor listened overmuch to explanations, and he rode 
with quietude, the very picture of a gallant soldier. 

Back on the edge of White Oak Swamp, Richard Cleave considered 
the order he had received. He found an ambiguity in the wording, a 
choice of constructions. He half turned to send the courier again to 
Winder, to make absolutely sure that the construction which he 
strongly preferred was correct. As hedid so, though he could not see 
the brigade beyond the belt of trees, he heard it in motion, coming 
down through the woods to cross the stream in the rear of the 65th. 
He looked at the ford and the silent woods beyond. From Frayser’s 
Farm, so short a distance away, came a deeper roll of thunder. It 
hada solemn and a pleading sound, How long are we to wait for any 
help? Cleave knit his brows; then, with a decisive gesture of his 
hand, he dismissed the doubt and stepped in front of his colour com- 
pany. Ailtention! Into column. Forward! 

On the road leading down to the bridge Stafford met his own 
division general, riding Rifle back to his command. “Hello, Major 
Stafford!” said Old Dick. ‘I thought I had lost you.” 

“General Jackson detained me, general.” 

“Yes, yes, you are n’t the only one! But let me tell you, major, 
he’s coming out of his spell!” 

“You think it was a spell, then, sir?” 

“Sure of it! Old Jackson simply has n’t been here at all. D. H. 
Hill thinks he’s been broken down and ill — and somebody else is 


WHITE OAK SWAMP 515 


poetical and says his star never shines when another’s is above it, 
which is nonsense — and somebody else thinks he thought we did 
enough in the Valley, which is damned nonsense — eh?” 

“Of course, sir. Damned nonsense.” 

Ewell jerked his head. “Yes, sir. No man’s his real self all the 
time — whether he’s a Presbyterian or not. Old Jackson simply 
has n’t been in this cursed low country at all! But ——! I’ve 
been trying to give advice down there, and, by God, sir, he’s ap- 
proaching! If it was a spell, it’s lifting! That bridge’ll be built 
pretty soon, I reckon, and when we cross at last we’ll cross with 
Stonewall Jackson going on before!” 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


MALVERN HILL 


® 


TAR by star the heavens paled. The dawn came faintly and 
S mournfully up from the east. Beneath it the battlefield of 
Frayser’s Farm lay hushed and motionless, like the sad canvas 
of a painter, the tragic dream of a poet. It was far flung over broken 
ground and strewn with wrecks of war. Dead men and dying — very 
many of them, for the fighting had been heavy — lay stretched in 
the ghostly light, and beside them dead and dying horses. Eighteen 
Federal guns had been taken. They rested on ridged earth, black 
against the cold, grey sky. Stark and silent, far and wide, rolled the 
field beneath the cold, mysterious, changing light. Beside the dead 
men there were sleeping troops, regiments lying on their arms, fallen 
last night where they were halted, slumbering heavily through the 
dew-drenched summer night. As the sky grew purple and the last 
star went out, the bugles began to blow. The living men rose. If the 
others heard a reveille, it was in far countries. 

Edward Cary, lying down in the darkness near one of the guns, 
had put out a hand and touched a bedfellow. The soldier seemed 
asleep, and Edward slept too, weary enough to have slept in Hades. 
Now, as the bugles called, he sat up and looked at his companion — 
who did not rise. “I thought you lay very still,’ said Edward. He 
sat a moment, on the dank earth, beside the still, grey figure. The 
gun stood a little above him; through a wheel as through a rose 
window he saw the flush of dawn. The dead soldier’s eyes were open; 
they, too, stared through the gun-wheel at the dawn. Edward closed 
them. “I never could take death seriously,” he said; ‘which is 
fortunate, I suppose.” 

Two hours later his regiment, moving down the Quaker road, 
came to a halt before a small, pillared, country church. A group of 
officers sat their horses near the portico. Lee was in front, quiet 
and grand. Out of the cluster Warwick Cary pushed his horse 
across to the halted regiment. Father and son were presently 


MALVERN HILL Cs) GF, 


holding converse beneath a dusty roadside cedar. “‘I am thankful 
to see you!”’ said Edward. “We heard of the great charge you made. 
Please take better care of yourself, father!” 

“The past week has been like a dream,” answered the other; 
“‘one of those dreams in which, over and over, some undertaking, 
vital to you and tremendous, is about to march. Then, over and 
over, comes some pettiest obstacle, and the whole vast matter is 
turned awry.”’ 

“Yesterday should have been ours.”’ 

“Yes. General Lee had planned as he always plans. We should 
have crushed McClellan. Instead, we fought alone — and we lost 
four thousand men; and though we made the enemy lose as many, 
he has again drawn himself out of our grasp and is before us. I 
think that to-day we will have a fearful fight.” 

“Jackson is over at last.” 

““Yes, close behind us. Whiting is leading; I saw him a moment. 
There’s a report that one of the Stonewall regiments crossed and 
was cut in pieces late yesterday afternoon —”’ 

“T hope it was n’t Richard’s!”’ 

“T hope not. I have a curious, boding feeling about it. — There 
beat your drums! Good-bye, again —”’ 

He leaned from his saddle and kissed his son, then backed his 
horse across the road to the generals by the pillared church. The 
regiment marched away, and as it passed it cheered General Lee. 
He lifted his hat. “Thank you, men. Do your best to-day — do 
your best.” 

“We'll mind you, Marse Robert, we’ll mind you!” cried the 
troops, and went by shouting. 

Somewhere down the Quaker Road the word ‘‘ Malvern Hill” 
seemed to drop from the skies. ‘‘Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. 
They ’reall massed on Malvern Hill. Three hundred and forty guns. 
And on the James the gunboats. Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. 
Malvern Hill.” 

A man in line with Edward described the place. ‘‘ My last year 
at William and Mary I spent Christmas at Westover. We hunted 
over all Malvern Hill. It rises one hundred and fifty feet, and the 
top’s a mile across. About the base there are thick forests and 
swamps, and Turkey Creek goes winding, winding to the James. 


518 THE LONG ROLL 


You see the James — the wide, old, yellow river, with the birds going 
screaming overhead. There were no gunboats on it that day, no 
Monitors, or Galenas, or Maritanzas, and if you’d told us up there 
on Malvern Hill that the next time we climbed it —! At Westover, 
after supper, they told Indian stories and stories of Tarleton’s troop- 
ers, and in the night we listened for the tap of Evelyn Byrd’s slipper 
on the stair. We said we heard it — anyhow, we did n’t hear gun- 
boats and three hundred thirty-two pounders!” 


“When only Beauty’s eyes did rake us fore and aft, 
When only Beaux used powder, and Cupid’s was the shaft —’ ” 


sang Edward, 


“ Most fatal was the war and pleasant to be slain —’”’ 


Malvern Hill, beat out the marching feet. Malvern Hill. Malvern 
Hill. Malvern Hill. 

There was a deep wood, out from which ran like spurs shallow ra- 
vines, clad with briar and bush and young trees; there was a stretch 
of rail fence; and there was a wheat field, where the grain stood in 
shocks. Because of the smoke, however, nothing could be seen 
plainly; and because of the most awful sound, few orders were dis- 
tinctly heard. Evidently officers were shouting; in the rents of the 
veil one saw waved arms, open mouths, gesticulations with swords. 
But the loud-mouthed guns spoke by the score, and the blast bore 
the human voice away. The regiment in which was Edward Cary 
divined an order and ceased firing, lying flat in sedge and sassafras, 
while a brigade from the rear roared by. Edward looked at his 
fingers. “Barrel burn them?” asked a neighbour. ‘‘Reckon they 
use red-hot muskets in hell? Wish you could see your lips, Edward! 
Round black O. Biting cartridges for a living — and it used to be 
when you read Plutarch that you were all for the peaceful heroes! 
You have n’t a lady-love that would look at you now! 


“Take, oh, take those lips away 
That so blackly are enshrined —’ 


Here comes a lamp-post — a lamp-post — a lamp-post!”’ 

The gunboats on the river threw the “‘lamp-posts.”’ The long and 
horrible shells arrived with a noise that was indescribable. A thou- 
sand shrieking rockets, perhaps, with at the end an explosion and a 


MALVERN HILL 519 


rain of fragments like rocks from Vesuvius. They had a peculiar 
faculty for getting on the nerves. The men watched their coming 
with something like shrinking, with raised arms and narrowed eyes. 
“Look out for the lamp-post — look out for the lamp-post — look 
out — Aaahhhh!”’ 

Before long the regiment was moved a hundred yards nearer the 
wheat-field. Here it became entangled in the ebb of a charge — the 
brigade which had rushed by coming back, piecemeal, broken and 
driven by an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now 
there was confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dread- 
ful, beneath the orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and bil- 
lowed, a curtain of strange texture, now parting, now closing, and 
when it parted disclosing immemorial Death and Wounds with some 
attendant martial pageantry. The commands were split as by 
wedges, the uneven ground driving them asunder, and the belching 
guns. They went up to hell mouth, brigade by brigade, even regi- 
ment by regiment, and in the breaking and reforming and twilight 
of the smoke, through the falling of officers and the surging to and 
fro, the troops became interwoven, warp of one division, woof of 
another. The sound was shocking; when, now and then there fell a 
briefest interval it was as though the world had stopped, had fallen 
into a gulf of silence. 

Edward Cary found beside him a man from another regiment, a 
small, slight fellow, young and simple. A shock of wheat gave both 
a moment’s protection. ‘Hot work!” said Edward, with his fine 
camaraderie. ‘You made a beautiful charge. We almost thought 
you would take them.” 

The other looked at him vacantly. ‘“‘I added up figures in the old 
warehouse,” he said, in a high, thin voice. ‘‘I added up figures in the 
old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used-to read plays. 
I added up Gg icesst in the old warehouse — Don’t you remember 
Hotspur? I always liked him, and that part — 


‘To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon; 
Or dive into the bottom of the deep —’” 


He stood up. Edward rose to his knees and put out a hand to draw 
him down. “It ’s enough to make you crazy, I’ll confess — but you 
must n’t stand up like that!” 


520 THE LONG ROLL 


The downward drawing hand was too late. There were blue 
sharpshooters in a wood in front. A ball entered the clerk’s breast 
and he sank down behind the wheat. “I added up figures in the old 
warehouse,” he again told Cary, “and when I went home at night 
I read plays —”’ 

The figure stiffened in Edward’s grasp. He laid it down, and from 
behind the wheat shock watched a grey battery in process of being 
knocked to pieces. It had arrived in this quarter of the field in a 
wild gallop, and with a happy insouciance had unlimbered and run 
up the guns back of a little crest topped with sumach, taking pains 
meanwhile to assure the infantry that now it was safe. The infantry 
had grinned. “Like you first-rate, artillery! Willing to bet on the 
gunners, but the guns are a /eelle small and few. Don’t know that 
we feel so awful safe!” 

The grey began. Four shells flew up the long slope and burst 
among the iron rows that made a great triple crown for Malvern 
Hill. The grey gunners cheered, and the appreciative infantry 
cheered, and the first began to reload while the second, flat in scrub 
and behind the wheat, condescended to praise. ‘Artillery does just 
about as well as can be expected! Awful old-fashioned arm — but 
well-meaning. . . . Look out — look . . . Eeehhh!”’ 

The iron crown that had been blazing toward other points of the 
compass now blazed toward this. Adversity came to the insouciant 
grey battery, adversity quickening to disaster. The first thunder 
blast thickened to a howling storm of shrapnel, grape, and can- 
ister. 

At the first gun gunner No. 1, ramming home a charge, was blown 
into fragments; at the second the arm holding the sponge staff was 
severed from gunner No. 3’s shoulder. A great shell, bursting directly 
over the third, killed two men and horribly mangled others; the car- 
riage of the fourth was crushed and set on fire. This in the begin- 
ning of the storm; as it swelled, total destruction threatened from the 
murk. The captain went up and down. “Try it a little longer, men. 
Try it a little longer, men. We’ve got to make up in quality, you 
know. We’ve got to make up in quality, you know. Marse Robert’s 
looking —I see him over there! Try it a little longer — try it a 
little longer.” 

An aide arrived. “For God’s sake, take what you’ve got left 


MALVERN HILL 521 


away! Yes,it’s an order. Your being massacred won’t help. Look 
out ~— Look —" 

No one in battle ever took account of time or saw any especial 
reason for being, now here, and now in quite a different place, or 
ever knew exactly how the places had been exchanged. Edward was 
practically certain that he had taken part in a charge, that his 
brigade had driven a body of blue infantry from a piece of woods. 
At any rate they were no longer in the wheat field, but in a shady 
wood, where severed twigs and branches floated pleasantly down. 
Lying flat, chin on hand, he watched a regiment storm and take a 
thick abattis — felled trees filled with sharpshooters — masking a 
hastily thrown up earthwork. The regiment was reserving its fire 
and losing heavily. An elderly man led it, riding a large old steady 
horse. ‘‘That’s Ex-Governor Smith,” said the regiment in the wood. 
“That’s Extra Billy! He’s a corker! Next time he runs he’s going 
to get all the votes —”’ 

The regiment tried twice to pass the abattis, but each time fell 
back. The brigadier had ordered it not to fire until it was past the 
trees; it obeyed, but sulkily enough. Men were dropping; the colour- 
bearer went down. There was an outcry. “Colonel! we can’t stand 
this! We'll all get killed before we fire a shot! The general don’t 
know how we’re fixed —” Extra Billy agreed with them. He rose 
in his stirrups, turned and nodded vigorous assent. “Of course you 
can’t stand it, boys! You ought n’t to be expected to. It’s all this 
infernal tactics and West P’int tomfoolery! Damn it, fire! and flush 
the game!”’ 

Edward laughed. From the fuss it was apparent that the abattis 
and earthwork had succumbed. At any rate, the old governor and 
his regiment were gone. He was of the colour-guard, and all the col- 
our-guard were laughing. “Did n’t you ever see him go into battle 
with his old blue umbrella up! Trotting along same as to a caucus — 
whole constituency following! Fine old political Roman! Look out, 
Yedward! Whole pine tree coming down.” 

The scene changed again, and it was the side of a ravine, with a 
fine view of the river and with Morell and Couch blazing somewhere 
above. The shells went overhead, bellowing monsters charging a 
grey battery on a hillock and a distant line of troops. ‘“‘That’s 
Pegram — that battery,’ said some one. ‘He does well.” ‘Has 


500 THE LONG ROLL 


any one any idea of the time?” asked another. “‘Sun’s so hidden 
there’ 8 no guessing. Don’t believe we’ll ever see his blessed light 
again.” 

A fisherman from the Eastern Shore stated that it was nearly five 
o’clock. ‘‘Fogs can’t fool me. Day’s drawing down, and tide’s 
going out —”’ 

The lieutenant-colonel appeared. ‘Somebody with an order has 
been shot, coming through the cornfield toward us. Three volun- 
teers to bring him in!” 

Edward and the Eastern Shore man and a lean and dry and mid- 
dle-aged lawyer from King and Queen bent their heads beneath 
their shoulders and plunged into the corn. All the field was like a 
miniature abattis, stalk and blade shot down and crossed and re- 
crossed in the wildest tangle. To make way over it was difficult 
enough, and before the three had gone ten feet the minies took a 
hand. The wounded courier lay beneath his horse, and the horse 
screamed twice, the sound rising above the roar of the guns. A ball 
pierced Edward’s cap, another drew blood from the lawyer’s hand. 
The fisherman was a tall and wiry man; as he ran he swayed like a 
mast in storm. The three reached the courier, dragged him from 
beneath the horse, and found both legs crushed. He looked at them 
with lustreless eyes. ‘‘You can’t do anything for me, boys. The 
general says please try to take those three guns up there. He’s 
going to charge the line beyond, and they are in the way.” 

“All right, we will,” said the lawyer. Now you put one arm 
round Cary’s neck and one round mine — 

But the courier shook his head. “ You leave me here I’m awful 
tired. You go take the guns instead. Ain’t no use, I tell you. I’d 
like to see the children, but —”’ 

In the act of speaking, as they lifted him, a ball went through his 
throat. The three laid the body down, and, heads bent between 
shoulders, ran over and through the corn toward the ravine. Two 
thirds of the way across, the fisherman was shot. He came to his 
knees and, in falling, clutched Edward. ‘‘Mast’s overboard,” he 
cried, in a rattling voice. ‘‘Cut her loose, damn you! —I’ll take the 
helm —” He, too, died. Cary and the lawyer got back to the gully 
and gave the order. 

The taking of those guns was no simple matter. It resembled 


MALVERN HILL 523 


child’s play only in the single-mindedness and close attention which 
went to its accomplishment. The regiment that reached them at 
last and took them, and took what was left of the blue gunners, was 
not much more than half a regiment. The murk up here on this 
semi-height was thick to choking; the odour and taste of the battle 
poisoned brass on the tongue, the colour that of a sand storm, the 
heat like that of a battleship in action, and all the place shook from 
the thunder and recoil of the tiers of great guns beyond, untaken, 
not to be taken. A regiment rushed out of the rolling smoke, by the 
half regiment. ‘Mississippi! Mississippi! — Well, even Mississippi 
is n’t going to do the impossible!” As the line went by, tall and 
swinging and yelling itself hoarse, the colonel was wounded and fell. 
The charge went on while the officer — he was an old man, very 
stately looking — dragged himself aside, and sitting in the sedge tied 
a large bright handkerchief above a wound in his leg. The charge 
dashed itself against the hillside, and the tier of guns flamed a 
death’s sickle and mowed it down. Breathless, broken, the regiment 
fell back. When it reached the old man with the bright handker- 
chief, it would have lifted him and carried him with it to the rear. 
He would not go. He said, “Tell the 21st they can’t get me till 
they take those guns!”’ 

The 21st mended its gaps and charged again. The old man 
set his hat on his sword, waved it in the air, and cheered his men 
as they passed. They passed him but to return. To go up against 
those lines of bellowing guns was mere heroic madness. Bleeding, 
exhausted, the men put out their hands for the old man. He drew 
his revolver. “I’ll shoot anybody who touches me! Tell the 21st 
they can’t get their colonel till they take those guns!” 

The 21st charged a third time, in vain. It came back —a part 
of it came back. The old man had fainted, and his men lifted and 
bore him away. | 

From the platform where he lay in the shadow of the three guns 
Edward Cary looked out over Malvern Hill, the encompassing low- 
land, marsh and forest and fields, the winding Turkey Creek and 
Western Creek, and to the south the James. A wind had sprung up 
and was blowing the battle smoke hither and yon. Here it hung 
heavily, and here a long lane was opened. The sun was low and red 
behind a filmy veil, dark and ragged like torn crape. He saw four 


524 THE LONG ROLL 


gunboats on the river; they were throwing the long, howling shells. 
The Monitor was there, an old foe — the cheese box on a shingle. 
Edward shut his eyes and saw again Hampton Roads, and how the 
Monitor had looked, darting from behind the Minnesota. The old 
turtle, the old Merrimac . . . and now she lay, a charred hull, far, 
far beneath the James, by Craney Island. 

The private on his right was a learned man. Edward addressed 
him. ‘Have you ever thought, doctor, how fearfully dramatic is this 
world ?” 

“Yes. It’s one of those facts that are too colossal to be seen. 
Shakespeare says all the world’s astage. That’s only a half-truth. 
The world’s a player, like the rest of us.” 

Below this niche stretched the grey battle-lines; above it, on the 
hilltop, by the cannon and over half the slope beneath, spread the 
blue. A forest stood behind the grey; out of it came the troops to 
the charge, the flags tossing in front. The upward reaching fingers 
of coppice and brush had their occupants, fragments of commands 
under cover, bands of sharpshooters. And everywhere over the 
open, raked by the guns, were dead and dying men. They lay thickly. 
Now and again the noise of the torment of the wounded made itself 
heard — a most doleful and ghostly sound coming up like a wail 
from the Inferno. There were, too, many dead or dying horses. 
Others, still unhurt, galloped from end to end of the field of death. 
In the wheatfield there were several of the old, four-footed warriors, 
who stood and ate of the shocked grain. There arrived a hush over 
the battlefield, one of those pauses which occur between exhaustion 
and renewed effort, effort at its height. The guns fell silent, the 
musketry died away, the gunboats ceased to throw those great 
shells. By contrast with the clangour that had prevailed, the still- 
ness seemed that of a desert waste, a dead world. Over toward a 
cross-road there could be made out three figures on horseback. The 
captain of Edward’s company was an old college mate; lying down 
with his men, he now drew himself over the ground and loaned Cary 
his field-glass. ‘It’s General Lee and General Jackson and Gen- 
oer) Oo imo Oth ig 

A body of grey troops came to occupy a finger of woods below the 
three captured guns. ‘‘That’s Cary’s Legion,”’ said the captain. 
“‘Here comes the colonel now!” 


MALVERN HILL §25 


The two commands were but a few yards apart. Fauquier Cary, 
dismounting, walked up the sedgy slope and asked to speak to his 
nephew. The latter left the ranks, and the two found a trampled 
space beside one of the great thirty-two pounders. A dead man or 
two lay in the parched grass, but there was nothing else to disturb. 
The quiet yet held over North and South and the earth that gave 
them standing room. “I have but a moment,” said the elder man. 
“This is but the hush before the final storm. We came by Jackson’s 
troops, and one of his officers whom I knew at the Point rode beside 
me a little way. They all crossed White Oak Swamp by starlight 
this morning, and apparently Jackson is again the Jackson of the 
Valley. It was a curious eclipse. The force of the man is such that, 
while his officers acknowledge the eclipse, it makes no difference to 
them. He is Stonewall Jackson — and that suffices. But that is not 
what I have to tell —” 

“T saw father a moment this morning. He said there was a rumour 
about one of the Stonewall regiments —”’ 

“Ves. It was the 65th.” 

“Cut to pieces?” 

“c Yes.”’ 

“Richard — Richard was not killed ?” 

“No. But many were. Hairston Breckinridge was killed —and 
some of the Thunder Run men—and very many others. Almost 
destroyed, Carlton said. They crossed at sunset. There were a 
swamp and a wood and a hollow commanded by hills. The en- 
emy was in force behind the hill, and there was beside a consider- 
able command in ambush, concealed in the woods by the swamp. 
These had a gun or two. All opened on the 65th. It was cut to 
pieces in the swamp and in a little marshy meadow. Only a rem- 
nant got back to the northern side of the creek. Richard is under 
arrest.” 

“He was acting under orders!” 

“So Carlton says he says. But General Jackson says there was 
no such order; that he disobeyed the order that was given, and now 
tries to screen himself. Carlton says Jackson is more steel-like than 
usual, and we know how it fared with Garnett and with others. 
There will be a court-martial. I am very anxious.” 

_ “Tam not,” said Edward stoutly. “There will be an honourable 


526 THE LONG ROLL 


acquittal. We must write and tell Judith that she’s not to worry! 
Richard Cleave did nothing that he should not have done.” 

“Of course, we know that. But Carlton says that, on the face of it, 
it’s an ugly affair. And General Jackson — Well, we can only await 
developments.” 

“Poor Judith! — and his sister and mother. . . . Poor women!”’ 

The other made a gesture of assent and sorrow. ‘‘ Well, I must go 
back. Take care of yourself, Edward. There will be the devil’s own 
work presently.” 

He went, and Edward returned to his fellows. The silence yet held 
over the field; the westering sun glowed dull red behind the smoke; 
the three figures rested still by the cross-roads; the mass of frowning 
metal topped Malvern Hill like a giant, smoke-wreathed chevaux de 
frise. Out of the brushwood to the left of the regiment, straight by 
it, upward towards the guns, and then at a tangent off through the 
fields to the woods, sped a rabbit. Legs to earth, it hurried with all 
its might. The regiment was glad of a diversion — the waiting was 
growing so intolerable. The men cheered the rabbit. ‘‘Go it, Molly 
Cottontail! — Go it, Molly!— Go it, Molly! — Hi! Don’t go that- 
away! Them’s Yankees! They’ll cut your head off! Got’other way 
— that’sit! Goit, Molly! Damn! If ’t wasn’t for my character, I’d 
go with you!” 

The rabbit disappeared. The regiment settled back to waiting, a 
very intolerable employment. The sun dipped lower and lower. The 
hush grew portentous. The guns looked old, mailed, dead warriors; 
the gunboats sleeping forms; the grey troops battle-lines in a great 
war picture, the three horsemen by the cross-roads a significant group 
in the same; the dead and wounded over all the fields, upon the 
slope, in the woods, by the marshes, the jetsam, still and heavy, of 
war at its worst. For a moment longer the wide and dreary stretch 
rested so, then with a wild suddenness sound and furious motion 
rushed upon the scene. The gunboats recommenced with their long 
and horrible shells. A grey battery opened on Berdan’s sharp- 
shooters strung in a line of trees below the great crown of guns. 
The crown flamed toward the battery, scorched and mangled it. 
By the cross-roads the three figures separated, going in different 
directions. Presently galloping horses — aides, couriers —crossed 
the plane of vision. They went from D. H. Hill in the centre to Jack- 


MALVERN HILL 527 


son’s brigades on the left and Magruder’s on the right. They had 
a mile of open to cross, and the iron crown and the sharpshooters 
flamed against them. Some galloped on and gave the orders. Some 
threw up their arms and fell, or, crashing to earth with a wounded 
horse, disentangled themselves and stumbled on through the iron 
rain. The sun drew close to the vast and melancholy forests across 
the river. Through a rift in the smoke, there came a long and crim- 
son shaft. It reddened the river, then struck across the shallows to 
Malvern Hill, suffused with a bloody tinge wood and field and the 
marshes by the creeks, then splintered against the hilltop and made 
a hundred guns to gleam. The wind heightened, lifting the smoke 
and driving it northward. It bared to the last red light the wild and 
dreary battlefield. 

From the centre rose the Confederate yell. Rods s brigade, led 
by Gordon, charged. It had half a mile of open to cross, and it was 
caught at once in the storm that howled from the crest of Malvern 
Hill. Every regiment suffered great loss; the 3d Alabama saw half 
its number slain or wounded. The men yelled again, and sprang 
on in the teeth of the storm. They reached the slope, almost below 
the guns. Gordon looked behind for the supporting troops which 
Hill had promised. They were coming, that grim fighter leading 
them, but they were coming far off, under clanging difficulties, 
through a hell of shrapnel. Rodes’s brigade alone could not wrest 
that triple crown from the hilltop — no, not if the men had been 
giants, sons of Anak! They were halted; they lay down, put mus- 
kets to shoulder and fired steadily and fired again on the blue in- 
fantry. 

It grew darker on the plain. Brigades were coming from the left, 
the right, the centre. There had been orders for a general advance. 
Perhaps the aides carrying them were among the slain, perhaps this, 
perhaps that. The event was that brigades charged singly — some- 
times even regiments crossed, witha cry, the twilight, groaning plain 
and charged Malvern Hill unsupported. The place flamed death 
and destruction. Hill’s ten thousand men pressed forward with the 
order of a review. The shot and shell met them like a tornado. The 
men fell by hundreds. The lines closed, rushed on. The Federal 
infantry joined the artillery. Musketry and cannon, the din became 
a prolonged and fearful roar of battle. 


528 THE LONG ROLL 


The sun disappeared. There sprang out in the western sky three 
long red bands of clouds. On the darkening slope and plain Hill 
was crushed back, before and among his lines a horror of exploding 
shells. Jackson threw forward Lawton and Whiting, Winder and 
the Louisiana troops, while on the right, brigade after brigade, 
Magruder hurled across the plain nine brigades. After Hill, Ma- 
gruder’s troops bore the brunt of the last fearful fighting. 

They stormed across the plain in twilight that was lit by the red 
flashes from the guns. The clouds of smoke were red-bosomed; the 
red bars stayed in the west. The guns never ceased their thundering, 
the musketry to roll. Death swung a wide scythe in the twilight of 
that first day of July. Anderson and Armistead, Barksdale, Semmes 
and Kershaw, Wright and Toombs and Mahone, rushed along the 
slope of Malvern Hill, as Ripley and Garland and Gordon and all the 
brigadiers of D. H. Hill had rushed before them. Death, issuing 
from that great power of artillery, laid the soldiers in swathes. The 
ranks closed, again and again the ranks closed; with diminished 
numbers but no slackening of courage, the grey soldiers again 
dashed themselves against Malvern Hill. The red bars in the west 
faded slowly to a deep purple; above them, in a clear space of sky, 
showed the silver Venus. Upon her cooling globe, in a day to come, 
intelligent life might rend itself as here — the old horror, the old 
tragedy, the old stained sublimity over again! All the drifting 
smoke was now red lit, and beneath it lay in their blood elderly men, 
and men in their prime, and young men — very many, oh, very 
many young men! As the night deepened there sprang, beneath the 
thunder, over all the field a sound like wind in reeds. It was a 
sighing sound, a low and grievous sound. The blue lost heavily, for 
the charges were wildly heroic; but the guns were never disabled, and 
the loss of the grey was the heaviest. Brigade by brigade, the grey 
faced the storm and were beaten back, only again to reel forward 
upon the slope where Death stood and swung his scythe. The last 
light dwelt on their colours, on the deep red of their battle-flags; 
then the western sky became no warmer than the eastern. The stars 
were out in troops; the battle stopped. 

D. H. Hill, an iron fighter with a mania for personal valour, stand- 
ing where he had been standing for an hour, in a pleasantly ex- 
posed spot, clapped on his hat and beckoned for his horse. The 


MALVERN HILL 529 


ground about him showed furrowed as for planting, and a neighbour- 
ing oak tree was so riddled with bullets that the weight of a man 
might have sent it crashing down. D. H. Hill, drawing long breath, 
spoke half to his staff, half to the stars: ‘‘Give me Federal artillery 
and Confederate infantry, and I’d whip the world!” 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


A WOMAN 


turned his head toward the high window. It showed him 

little, merely a long strip of blue sky above housetops. The 
window was open, and the noises of the street came in. He knew 
them, checked them off in his mind. He was doing well. A body, 
superbly healthful, might stand out boldly against a minie ball or 
two, just as calm nerves, courage and serene judgement were of 
service in a war hospital such as this. If he was restless now, it was 
because he was wondering about Christianna. It was an hour past 
her time for coming. 

The ward was fearfully crowded. This, however, was the end by 
the stair, and he had a little cut-off place to himself. Many in the 
ward yet lay on the floor, on a blanket as he had done that first 
morning. In the afternoon of that day a wide bench had been 
brought into his corner, a thin flock mattress laid upon it, and he 
himself lifted from the floor. He had protested that others needed 
a bed much more, that he was used to lying on the earth — but 
Christianna had been firm. He wondered why she did not come. 

Chickahominy, Gaines’s Mill, Garnett’s and Golding’s farms, 
Peach Orchard, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Frayser’s Farm, 
Malvern Hill— dire echoes of the Seven Days’ fighting had 
thronged into this hospital as into all others, as into the houses of 
citizens and the public buildings and the streets! All manner of 
wounded soldiers told the story — ever so many soldiers and ever 
so many variants of the story. The dead bore witness, and the wail- 
ing of women which was now and then heard in the streets; not 
often, for the women were mostly silent, with pressed lips. And the 
ambulances jolting by —and the sound of funerals —and the 
church bells tolling, tolling — all these bore witness. And day and 
night there was the thunder of the cannon. From Mechanicsville 
and Gaines’s Mill it had rolled near and loud, from Savage Station 


‘, LLAN GOLD, lying in a corner of the Stonewall Hospital, 


® aA WOMAN 531 


somewhat less so; White Oak Swamp and Frayser’s Farm had car- 
ried the sound yet further off, and from Malvern Hill it came but 
distantly. But loud or low, near or far, day by day and into each 
night, Richmond heard the cannon. At first the vibration played on 
the town’s heart, like a giant hand on giant strings. But at last the 
tune grew old and the town went about its business. There was so 
much to do! one could not stop to listen to cannon. Richmond wasa 
vast hospital; pain and fever in all places, and, around, the shadow of 
death. Hardly a house but mourned a kinsman or kinsmen; early and 
late the dirges wailed through the streets. So breathlessly filled were 
the days, that often the dead were buried at night. The weather was 
hot — days and nights hot, close and still. Men and women went 
swiftly through them, swift and direct as weavers’ shuttles. Priva- 
tion, early comrade of the South, was here; scant room, scant sup- 
plies, not too much of wholesome food for the crowded town, few 
medicines or alleviatives, much to be done and done at once with 
the inadequatest means. There was little time in which to think in 
general terms; all effort must go toward getting done the immediate 
thing. The lift and tension of the time sloughed off the immaterial 
weak act or thought. There were present a heroic simplicity, a 
naked verity, a full cup of service, a high and noble altruism. The 
plane was epic, and the people did well. 

The sky within Allan’s range of vision was deep blue; the old 
brick gable-ends of houses, mellow and old, against it. A soldier 
with a broken leg and a great sabre cut over the head, just brought 
into the ward, brought with him the latest news. He talked loudly, 
and all down the long room, crowded to suffocation, the less desper- 
ately wounded raised themselves on their elbows to hear. Others, 
shot through stomach or bowels, or fearfully torn by shells, or with 
the stumps of amputated limbs not doing well, raved on in delirium 
or kept up their pitiful moaning. The soldier raised his voice higher, 
and those leaning on elbows listened with avidity. ‘ Evelington 
Heights? Where’s Evelington Heights?’ — “Between Westover 
and Rawling’s millpond, near Malvern Hill!” — ‘ Malvern Hill! 
That was ghastly!’ —“ Go on, sergeant-major! We’re been pining 
for a newspaper.” : 

‘““Were any of you boys at Malvern Hill?” 

‘““Yes, — only those who were there ain’t in a fix to tell about it! 


532 THE LONG ROLL 


That man over there —and that one —and that one —oh, a 
middling lot! They’re pretty badly off — poor boys!” 
From a pallet came a hollow voice. “T was at Malvern Hill, and 
I ain’t never going there again —I ain’t never going there again — 
I ain’t never. . . . Who’s that singing? I kin sing, too — 
‘The years creep slowly by, Lorena; 
The snow is on the grass again; 


The sun’s low down the sky, Lorena; 
The frost gleams where the flowers have been—’ ”’ 


“Don’t mind him,” said the soldiers on elbows. ‘Poor fellow! 
he ain’t got any voice anyhow. We know about Malvern Hill. Mal- 
vern Hill was pretty bad. And we heard there’d been a cavalry 
rumpus — Jeb Stuart and Sweeney playing their tricks! We did n’t 
know the name of the place. Evelington Heights! Pretty name.” 

The sergeant-major would not be cheated of Malvern Hill. 
“““Pretty bad!’ I should say ’t was pretty bad! Malvern Hill was 
awful. If anything could induce me to be a damn Yankee ’t would 
be them guns of their’n! Yes, sirree, bob! we fought and fought, and 
ten o’clock came and there was n’t any moon, and we stopped. And 
in the night-time the damn Yankees continued to retreat away. 
There was an awful noise of gun-wheels all the night long — so the 
sentries said, and the surgeons and the wounded and, I reckon, the 
generals. The rest of us, we were asleep. I don’t reckon there ever 
was men any more tired. Malvern Hill was —I can’t swear be- 
cause there are ladies nursing us, but Malvern Hill was — Well, 
dawn blew at reveille — No, doctor, I ain’t getting light-headed. 
I just get my words a little twisted. Reveille blew at dawn, and 
there were sheets of cold pouring rain, and everywhere there were 
dead men, dead men, dead men lying there in the wet, and the am- 
bulances were wandering round like ghosts of wagons, and the wood 
was too dripping to make a fire, and three men out of my mess were 
killed, and one was a boy that we’d all adopted, and it was awful 
- discouraging. Yes, we were right tired, damn Yankees and all of 
us. . . . Doctor, if I was you I would n’t bother about that leg. It’s 
all right as it is, and you might hurt me. . . . Oh, all right! Kin I 
smoke? .. . Yuugh! Well, boys, the damn Yankees continued 
their retreat to Harrison’s Landing, where their hell-fire gunboats 
could stand picket for them. . . . Say, ma’am, would you kindly 


A WOMAN 523 


tell me why that four-post bed over there is all hung with wreaths of 


roses? — ‘Is n’t any bed there?’ But there is! I see it. . . . Eve- 
lington Heights —and Stuart dropping shells into the damn 
Yankees’ camp. . . . They are roses, the old Giants of Battle by 


the beehive. . . . Evelington Heights. Eveling— Well, the damn 
Yankees dragged their guns up there, too. . . . If the beehive’s there, 
then the apple tree’s here — Grandma, if you’ll ask him not to whip 
me I’ll never take them again, and I’ll hold your yarn every time 
you want me to —” 

The ward heard no more about Evelington Heights. It knew, how- 
ever, that it had been no great affair; it knew that McClellan with | 
his exhausted army, less many thousand dead, wounded, and pris- 
oners, less fifty-two guns and thirty-five thousand small arms, less 
enormous stores captured or destroyed, less some confidence at 
Washington, rested down the James by Westover, in the shadow of 
gunboats. The ward guessed that, for a time at least, Richmond was 
freed from the Northern embrace. It knew that Lee and his ex- 
hausted army, less even more of dead and wounded than had fallen 
on the other side, rested between that enemy and Richmond. Lee 
was watching; the enemy would come no nearer for this while. For 
all its pain, for all the heat, the blood, the fever, thirst and woe, the 
ward, the hospital, all the hospitals, experienced to-day a sense of 
triumph. It was so with the whole city. Allan knew this, lying, 
looking with sea-blue eyes at the blue summer sky and the old 
and mellow roofs. The city mourned, but also it rejoiced. There 
stretched the black thread, but twisted with it was the gold. A 
pan sounded as well as a dirge. Seven days and nights of smoke 
and glare upon the horizon, of the heart-shaking cannon roar, of the 
pouring in of the wounded, of processions to Hollywood, of anguish, 
ceaseless labour, sick waiting, dizzy hope, descending despair... . 
Now, at last, above it all the bells rang for victory. A young girl, 
coming through the ward, had an armful of flowers, — white lilies, 
citron aloes, mignonette, and phlox — She gave her posies to all who 
stretched out a hand, and went out with her smiling face. Allan held 
a great stalk of garden phlox, white and sweet. It carried him back 
to the tollgate and to the log schoolhouse by Thunder Run... . 
Twelve o’clock. Was not Christianna coming at all ? 

This was not Judith Cary’s ward, but now she entered it. Allan, 


534 THE LONG ROLL 


watching the narrow path between the wounded, saw her coming 
from the far door. He did not know who she was; he only looked 
from the flower in his hand and had a sense of strength and sweet- 
ness, of something noble approaching nearer. She paused to ask a 
question of one of the women; answered, she came straight on. He 
saw that she was coming to the cut-off corner by the stair, and in- 
stinctively he straightened a little the covering over him. In a 
moment she was standing beside him, in her cool hospital dress, with 
her dark hair knotted low, with a flower at her breast. ‘“‘You are 
Allan Gold ?” she said. 

oe Vied 7? 

“My name is Judith Cary. Perhaps you have heard of me. I have 
been to Lauderdale and to Three Oaks.” 

“Yes,” said Allan. ‘‘I have heard of you. I —” 

There was an empty box beside the wall. Judith drew it nearer 
to his bed and sat down. ‘‘ You have been looking for Christianna? 
I came to tell you about poor little Christianna — and — and other 
things. Christianna’s father has been killed.”’ 

Allan uttered an exclamation. “Isham Maydew! I never thought 
of his going! . . . Poor child!” 

“So she thought she ought not to come to-day. Had there been 
strong reason, many people dependent upon her, she would have 
- come.’ 

“Poor Christianna — poor wild rose! . . . It’s ghastly, this war! 
There is nothing too small and harmless for its grist.” 

“T agree with you. Nothing too great; nothing too small. No- 
thing too base, as there is nothing too noble.” 

‘“Tsham Maydew! He was lean and tough and still, like Death ina 
picture. Where was he killed ? ”’ 

“Tt was at White Oak Swamp. At White Oak Swamp, the day 
before Malvern Hill.’ 

Allan looked at her. There was more in her voice than the non- 
coming of Christianna, than the death of Isham Maydew. She had 
spoken in a clear, low, bell-like tone that held somehow the ache of 
the world. He was simple and direct, and he spoke at once out of 
his thought. He knew that all the men of a house were at the 
front. ‘You have had a loss of your own ? — 

She shook her head. “I? No. I have had no loss.” 


A WOMAN eas 


“Now,” thought Allan, ‘‘there’s something proud in it.” He 
looked at her with his kindly, sea-blue eyes. In some chamber of 
the brain there flashed out a picture — the day of the Botetourt 
Resolutions, winter dusk after winter sunset and Cleave and him- 
self going homeward over the long hilltop — with talk, among other 
things, of visitors at Lauderdale. This was ‘“‘the beautiful one.”’” He 
remembered the lift of Cleave’s head and his voice. Judith’s 
large dark eyes had been raised; transparent, showing always the 
soul within as did his own, they now met Allan’s. “The 65th,” she 
said, “‘was cut to pieces.” 

The words, dragged out as they were, left a shocked silence. Here, 
in the corner by the stair, the arch of wood partially obscuring the 
ward, with the still blue sky and the still brick gables, they seemed 
for the moment cut away from the world, met on desert sands to 
tell and hear a dreadful thing. “‘Cut to pieces,” breathed Allan. 
“The 65th cut to pieces!” 

The movement which he made displaced the bandage about his 
shoulder. She left the box, kneeled by him and straightened matters, 
then went back to her seat. “It was this way,’ she said, — and told 
him the story as she had heard it from her father and from Fauquier 
Cary. She spoke with simplicity, in the low, bell-like tone that held 
the ache of the world. Allan listened, with his hand over his eyes. 
- His regiment that he loved! . . . all the old, familiar faces. 

“Yes, he was killed — Hairston Breckinridge was killed, fighting 
gallantly. He died, they say, before he knew the trap they were 
caught in. And Christianna’s father was killed, and others of the 
Thunder Run men, and very many from the county and from other 
counties. I do not know how many. Fauquier called it slaughter, 
said no worse thing has happened to any single command. Richard 
got what was left back across the swamp.” 

Allan groaned. ‘‘The 65th! General Jackson himself called it 
‘the fighting 65th!’ Just a remnant of it left — left of the 65th!” 

“Yes. The roll was called, and somany did not answer. They say 
other Stonewall regiments wept.” 

Allan raised himself upon the bench. Shestarted forward. “Don’t 
do that!” and with her hand pressed him gently down again. “I 
knew,” she said, “that you were here, and I have heard Richard 
speak of you and say how good and likable you were. And I have 


536 THE LONG ROLL 


worked hard all the morning, and just now I thought, ‘I must speak 
to some one who knows and loves him or I will die.’ And so I came. 
I knew that the ward might hear of the 65th any moment now and 
begin to talk of it, so I was not afraid of hurting you. But you must 
lie quiet.”’ 

“Very well, I will. I want to know about Richard Cleave — about 
my colonel.” 

Her dark eyes met the sea-blue ones fully. ‘He is under arrest,” 
she said. “General Jackson has preferred charges against him.” 

“Charges of what?” 

“‘Of disobedience to orders — of sacrificing the regiment — of — 
of retreating at last when he should not have done so and leaving 
his men to perish — of — of —. I have seen a copy of the charge. 
Whereas the satd colonel of the 65th did shamefully —”’ 

Her voice broke. “Oh, if I were God —”’ 

There was a moment’s silence — silence here in the corner by the 
stair, though none beyond in the painful, moaning ward. A bird 
sailed across the strip of blue sky; the stalk of phlox on the soldier’s 
narrow bed lay withering in the light. Allan spoke. “General Jack- 
son is very stern with failure. He may believe that charge. I don’t 
see how he can; but if he made it he believes it. But you — you 
don’t believe it? —”’ 

“Believe it?’”’ she said. “‘No more than God believes it! The 
question is now, how to help Richard.” 

“Have you heard from him?” 

She took from her dress a folded leaf torn from a pocket-book. 
‘You are his friend. You may read it. Wait, I will hold it.” She 
laid it before him, holding it in her slight, fine, strong fingers. 

He read. Judith: You will hear of the fate of the 65th. How it hap- 
pened I do not yet understand. It is like death on my heart. You will 
hear, too, of my own trouble. As to me, believe only that I could sit beside 
you and talk to-day as we talked awhile ago, in the sunset. Richard. 

She refolded the paper and put it back. “The evidence will clear 
him,” said Allan. “It must. The very doubt is absurd.” 

Her face lightened. ‘‘General Jackson will see that he was hasty 
— unjust. I can understand such anger at first, but later, when he 
reflects — Richard will be declared innocent _» 

“Yes. An honourable acquittal. It will surely be so.” 


A WOMAN 4 


“Tam glad I came. You have always known him and been his 
friend.” 

“Let me tell you the kind of things I know of Richard Cleave. 
No, it does n’t hurt me to talk.”’ 

“T can stay a little longer. Yes, tell me.” 

Allan spoke at some length, in his frank, quiet voice. She sat 
beside him, with her cheek on her hand, the blue sky and old house 
roofs above her. When he ceased her eyes were full of tears. She 
would not let them fall. “If I began to cry I should never stop,” she 
said, and smiled them away. Presently she rose. “‘I must go now. 
Christianna will be back to-morrow.” 

She went away, passing up the narrow path between the wounded 
and out at the further door. Allan watched her going, then turned 
alittle on the flock bed, and lifting his unbandaged arm laid it across 
his eyes. The 65th cut to pieces — The 65th cut to pieces — 

At sunset Judith went home. The small room up in the branches 
of the tulip tree — she hardly knew how many months or years she 
had inhabited it. There had passed, of course, only weeks — but 
Time had widened its measure. To all intents and purposes she had 
been a long while in Richmond. This high, quiet niche was familiar, 
familiar! familiar the old, slender, inlaid dressing-table and the long, 
thin curtains and the engraving of Charlotte Corday; familiar the 
cool, green tree without the window and the nest upon a bough; 
familiar the far view and wide horizon, by day smoke-veiled, by 
night red-lit. The smoke was lifted now; the eye saw further than 
it had seen for days. The room seemed as quiet as a tomb. Fora 
moment the silence oppressed her, and then she remembered that it 
was because the cannon had stopped. 

She sat beside the window, through the dusk, until the stars came 
out; then went downstairs and took her part at the table, about 
which the soldier sons of the house were gathering. They brought 
comrades with them. The wounded eldest son was doing well, the 
army was victorious, the siege was lifted, the house must be made 
gay for “ the boys.’’ No house was ever less bright for Judith. Now 
she smiled and listened, and the young men thought she did not 
realize the seriousness of the army talk about the 65th. They them- 
selves were careful not to mention the matter. They talked of a 
thousand heroisms, a thousand incidents of the Seven Days; but 


538 THE LONG ROLL 


they turned the talk —if any one, unwary, drew it that way — 
from White Oak Swamp. They mistook her feeling; she would 
rather they had spoken out. Her comfort was when, afterwards, 
she went for a moment into the “chamber” to see the wounded 
eldest. He was a warm-hearted, rough diamond, fond of his cousin. 

““What’s this damned stuff I hear about Richard Cleave and a 
court-martial? What — nonsense! I beg your pardon, Judith.” 
Judith kissed him, and finding “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne”’ face 
down on the counterpane offered to read to him. 

“You would rather talk about Richard,” he said. “I know you 
would. Soshould I. It’s all the damnedest nonsense! Such a charge 
as that! — Tell you-what, Judith. D’ye remember “ Woodstock ’ and 
Cromwell in it? Well, Stonewall Jackson’s like Cromwell — of 
course, a better man, and a greater general, and a nobler cause, but 
still he’s like him! Don’t you fret! Cromwell had to listen to the 
truth. He did it, and so will Stonewall Jackson. Such damned stuff 
and nonsense! It hurts me worse than that old bayonet- jab ever 
could! I’d like to hear what Edward says.” 

““He says, ‘Duck your head and let it go by. The grass’ll grow 
as green to-morrow.’ ”’ 

“You aren’t crying, are you, Judith? —I thought not. You 
are n’t the crying kind. Don’t do it. War’s the stupidest beast.” 

ep NN ie Ngs 

“Cousin Margaret’s with Richard, is n’t she?” 

“Not with him — that could n’t be, they said. But she and 
Miriam have gone to Merry Mount. It’s in the lines. I have hada 
note from her.” 

“What did she say? — You don’t mind, Judith?” 

“No, Rob, I don’t mind. It was just a verse from a psalm. She 
said, [ had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord 
in the land of the living. ... Be of good courage and He shall 
strengthen thy heart.” 

Later, in her room again, she sat by the window through the 
greater part of the night. The stars were large and soft, the airs 
faint, the jasmine in the garden below smelled sweet. The hospital 
day stretched before her; she must sleep so that she could work. She 
never thought — in that city and time no woman thought — of 
ceasing from service because of private grief. Moreover, work was 


A WOMAN 539 


her salvation. She would be betimes at the hospital to-morrow, and 
she would leave it late. She bent once more a long look upon the 
east, where were the camp-fires of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. In 
imagination she passed the sentries; she moved among the sleeping 
brigades. She found one tent, or perhaps it would be instead a rude 
cabin. . . . She stretched her arms upon the window-sill, and they 
and her thick fallen hair were wet at last with her tears. 

Three days passed. On the third afternoon she left the hospital 
early and went to St. Paul’s. She chose again the dusk beneath 
the gallery, and she prayed dumbly, fiercely, ““O God. ...0O 
Cod. 

The church was fairly filled. The grey army was now but a little 
way without the city; it had come back to the seven hills after the 
seven days. It had come back the hero, the darling. Richmond took 
the cypress from her doors; put off the purple pall and tragic mask. 
Last July Richmond was to fall, and this July Richmond was to fall, 
and lo! she sat secure on her seven hills and her sons did her honour, 
and for them she would have made herself a waste place. She yet 
toiled and watched, yet mourned for the dead and hung over the 
beds of the wounded, and more and more she wondered whence were 
to appear the next day’s yard of cloth and measure of flour. But in 
these days she overlaid her life with gladness and made her house 
pleasant for her sons. The service at St. Paul’s this afternoon was 
one of thankfulness; the hymns rang triumphantly. There were 
many soldiers. Two officers came in together. Judith knew Gen- 
eral Lee, but the other? . . . in a moment she saw that it was Gen- 
eral Jackson. Her heart beat to suffocation. She sank down in the 
gold dusk of her corner. “‘O God, let him see the truth. O God, let 
him see the truth —” 

Outside, as she went homeward in the red sunset, she paused for 
a moment to speak to an old free negro who was begging for alms. 
She gave him something, and when he had shambled on she stood 
still a moment here at the corner of the street, with her eyes upon 
the beautiful rosy west. There was a garden wall behind her and a 
tall crape myrtle. As she stood, with the light upon her face, Maury 
Stafford rode by. He saw her as she saw him. His brooding face 
flushed; he made as if to check his horse, but did not so. He lifted 
his hat high and rode on, out of the town, back to the encamped 


540 THE LONG ROLL 


army. Judith had made no answering motion; she stood with lifted 
face and unchanged look, the rosy light flooding her, the rosy tree 
behind her. When he was gone she shivered a little. ‘It is not 
Happiness that hates; it is Misery,”’ she thought. “When I was 
happy I never felt like this. I hate him. He is glad of Richard’s 
peril.” 

That night she did not sleep at all but sat bowed together in the 
window, her arms about her knees, her forehead upon them, and her 
dark hair loose about her. She sat like a sibyl till the dawn, then 
rose and bathed and dressed, and was at the hospital earliest of all 
the workers of that day. In the evening again, just at dusk, she 
reéntered the room, and presently again took her seat by the win- 
dow. The red light of the camp-fires was beginning to show. 

There was a knock at the door. Judith rose and opened to a tur- 
baned coloured girl. ‘Yes, Dilsey?” 

“‘Miss Judith, de gin’ral air downstairs. He say, ax you kin he 
come up to yo’ room?” 

“Yes, yes, Dilsey! Tell him to come.” 

When her father came he found her standing against the wall, 
her hands, outstretched behind her, resting on it. The last soft 
bloom of day was upon her; indefinably, with her hands so, the wall 
behind her and her lifted head, she looked a soldier facing a firing 
party. “Tell me quickly,” she said, ‘‘the exact truth.” 

Warwick Cary closed the door behind him and came toward her. 
“The court found him guilty, Judith.” 

As she still stood, the light from without upon her face, he took her 
in his arms, drew her from the wall and made her sit in the chair by 
the window, then placed himself beside her, and leaning over took 
her hands in his strong clasp. ‘‘ Many a court has found many a 
man guilty, Judith, whom his own soul cleared.” 

“That is true,” she answered. ‘‘Your own judgment has not 
changed ?” 

“No, Judith, no.” 

She lifted his hand and kissed it. “ Just a moment, and then you’ll 
tell me —”’ . 

They sat still in the soft summer air. The stars were coming out. 
Off to the east showed the long red light where was the army. Ju- 
dith’s eyes rested here. He saw it, and saw, presently, courage lift 


A WOMAN 541 


into her face. It came steady, with a deathless look. ‘“‘Now,” she 
said, and loosed her hands. 

“Tt is very bad,’ he answered slowly. “‘The evidence was 
more adverse than I could have dreamed. Only on the last count 
was there acquittal.” 

“The last count? —”’ 

“The charge of personal cowardice.” : 

Her eyelids trembled a little. ‘I am glad,” she said, “that they 
had a gleam of reason.” 

The other uttered a short laugh, proud and troubled. ‘‘Yes. It 
would not have occurred to me — just that accusation. . . . Well, 
he stood cleared of that. But the other charges, Judith, the others 
—” He rested his hands on his sword hilt and gazed broodingly 
into the deepening night. “The court could only find as it did. I 
myself, sitting there, listening to that testimony. . . . It is inex- 
plicable!” 

- Ten me all, 

“General Jackson’s order was plain. A staff officer carried it to 
General Winder with perfect correctness. Winder repeated it to the 
court, and word for word Jackson corroborated it. The same 
officer, carrying it on from Winder to the 65th came up with a courier 
belonging to the regiment. To this man, an educated, reliable, 
trusted soldier, he gave the order.” 

“He should not have done so ?”’ 

“Tt is easy to say that — to blame because this time there’s a 
snarl to unravel! The thing is done often enough. It should not be 
done, but it is. Staff service with us is far too irregular. The officer 
stands to receive a severe reprimand — but there is no reason to 
believe that he did not give the order to the courier with all the 
accuracy with which he had already delivered it to Winder. He 
testified that he did so give it, repeated it word for word to the 
court. He entrusted it to the courier, taking the precaution to make 
the latter say it over to him, and then he returned to General Jack- 
son, down the stream, before the bridge they were building. That 
closed his testimony. He received the censure of the court, but 
what he did has been done before.” 

“The courier testified —”’ 

“No. That is the link that drops out. The courier was killed. 


542 THE LONG ROLL 


A Thunder Run man — Steven Dagg — testified that he had been 
separated from the regiment. Returning to it along the wooded 
bank of the creek, he arrived just behind the courier. He heard him 
give the order to the colonel. ‘Could he repeat it?’ ‘Yes.’ He did 
so, and it was, accurately, Jackson’s order.”’ 

“Richard — what did Richard say?” 

“He said the man lied.” 

ce Ah ! ) 

“The courier fell before the first volley from the troops in the 
woods. He died almost at once, but two men testified as to the only 
thing he had said. It was, ‘We ought never all of us to have crossed. 
Tell Old Jack I carried the order straight.’ ” 

He rose and with a restless sigh began to pace the little room. 
“T see a tangle — something not understood — some stumbling- 
block laid by laws beyond our vision. We cannot even define it, 
cannot even find its edges. We do not know its nature. Things 
happen so sometimes in this strange world. I do not think that 
Richard himself understands how the thing chanced. He testi- 
fied —”” 

Ves, O00) yes 

“‘He repeated to the court the order he had received. It was not 
the order that Jackson had given and that Winder had sent on to 
him, though it differed in only two points. And neither — and 
there, Judith, there is a trouble! — neither was it with entire ex- 
plicitness an order to do that which he did do. He acknowledged 
that, quite simply. He had found at the time an ambiguity — he 
had thought of sending again for confirmation to Winder. And then 
— unfortunate man! something happened to strengthen the inter- 
pretation which, when all is said, he preferred to receive, and upon 
which he acted. Time pressed. He took the risk, if there was a risk, 
and crossed the stream.” 

“Father, do you blame him?” 

‘““He blames himself, Judith, somewhat cruelly. But I think it is 
because, just now, of the agony of memory. He loved his regiment. 
— No. What sense in blaming where, had there followed success, 
you would have praised? Then it would have been proper daring; 
now —I could say that he had been wiser to wait, but I do not 
know that in his place I should have waited. He was rash, perhaps, 


A WOMAN 543 


but who is there to tell? Had he chosen another interpretation and 
delayed, and been mistaken, then, too, commination would have 
fallen. No. I blame him less than he blames himself, Judith. But 
the fact remains. Even by his own showing there was a doubt. Even 
accepting his statement of the order he received, he took it upon 
himself to decide.” 

“They did not accept his statement —”’ 

“No, Judith. They judged that he had received General Jack- 
son’s order and had disobeyed it. — I know —I know! To us it is 
monstrous. But the court must judge by the evidence — and the 
verdict was to be expected. It was his sole word, and where his own 
safety was at stake. ‘Had not the dead courier a reputation for 
reliability, for accuracy?’ ‘He had, and he would not lay the blame 
there, besmirching a brave man’s name.’ ‘Where then?’ ‘He did not 
know. It was so that he had received the order’ — Judith, Judith! 
I have rarely seen truth so helpless as in this case.”’ 

She drew a difficult breath. “No help. And they said —”’ 

“He was pronounced guilty of the first charge. That carried with 
it the verdict as to the second — the sacrifice of the regiment. There, 
too — guilty. Only the third there was no sustaining. The loss was 
fearful, but there were men enough left to clear him from that 
charge. He struggled with desperation to retrieve his error, if error 
it were; he escaped death himself as by a miracle, and he brought 
off a remnant of the command which, in weaker hands, might have 
been utterly swallowed up. On that count he is clear. But on the 
others — guilty, and without mitigation.” 

He came back to the woman by the window. “Judith, I would 
rather put the sword in my own heart than put it thus in yours. 
War is a key, child, that unlocks to all dreadful things, to all mis- 
takes, to every sorrow!”’ 

“T want every worst drop of it,” she said. “Afterward I’ll look 
for comfort. Do not be afraid for me; I feel as strong as the hills, 
the air, the sea — anything. What is the sentence?” 

“Dismissal from the army.” 

Judith rose and, with her hands on the window-sill, leaned out into 
the night. Her gaze went straight to the red light in the eastern sky. 
There was an effect as though the force, impalpable, real, which 
was herself, had gone too, flown from the window straight toward 


544 THE LONG ROLL 


that horizon, leaving here but a fair ivory shell. It was but moment- 
ary; the chains held and she turned back tothe shadowed room. 
“You have seen him?”’ 

oc Yes.”’ 

cc How eae B/ 

“He has much of his mother in him, Judith. Eventually he will, 
I think, take it that way. But now it is his father that shows. He 
is very silent — grey and hard and silent.” 

“Where is he?”’ 

‘“‘At present yet under guard. To-morrow it will all be over.” 

“‘He will be free, you mean?”’ 

“Yes, he will be free.” 

She came and put her arm around her father’s neck. “Father, 
you know what I want todo then? To do just as soon as I shall have 
seen him and made him realize that it is for my happiness. I want to 
marry him. . . . Ah, don’t look at me so, saying nothing!”’ She 
withdrew herself a little, standing with her clasped hands against 
his breast. ‘‘ You expected that, did you not? Why, what else... . 
Father, I am not afraid of you. You will let me do it.” 

He regarded her with a grave, compassionate face. “No. You 
need not fear me, Judith. It is hardly father and child with you and 
me. Itis soul and soul, and I trust your soul with its own concerns. 
Moreover, if it is pain to consider what you would do, the pang 
would be greater to find you not capable. ... Yes, I would let you 
do it. But I do not think that Richard will.” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 
CEDAR RUN 


HE Seven Days brought a sterner temper into this war. The 
two sides grew to know each other better; each saw how 
determined was the other, and either foe, to match the other, 

raised the bronze in himself to iron. The great army, still under 
McClellan, at Harrison’s Landing, became the Army of the Poto- 
mac. The great army guarding Richmond under Lee, became the 
Army of Northern Virginia. President Lincoln called upon the 
Governors of the Northern States for three hundred thousand men, 
and offered bounties. President Davis called upon the Governors 
of the Southern States for conscripts, and obtained no great number, 
for the mass of the men had volunteered. The world at large looked 
on, now and henceforth, with an absorbed regard. The struggle 
promised to be Homeric, memorable. The South was a fortress 
beleaguered; seven hundred thousand square miles of territory lost 
and inland as the steppes of Tartary, for all her ports were blocked 
by Northern men-of-war. Little news from the fortress escaped; 
the world had a sense of gigantic grey figures moving here and there 
behind a great battle veil, of a push against the fortress, a push from 
all sides, with approved battering rams, scaling ladders, hooks, 
grapples, mines, of blue figures, all known and described in heroic 
terms by the Northern public prints, a push repelled by the voice- 
less, printless, dimly-discerned grey figures. Not that the grey, too, 
were not described to the nations in the prints above. They were. 
The wonder was that the creatures could fight — even, it appeared, 
fight to effect. Around and over the wide-flung fortress the battle 
smoke rolled and eddied. Drums were distantly heard, now rallying, 
now muffled. A red flag with a blue cross rose and fell and rose 
again; grey names emerged, floated, wraith-like, over the sea, not to 
be stopped by blue men-of-war, names and picturesque nicknames, 
loved of soldiers. It grew to be allowed that there must be courage 
in the fortress, and a gift of leadership. All was seen confusedly, 


546 THE LONG ROLL 


but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the 
far-borne clang and smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demon- 
strated to a nicety just how long the fortress might hold out, and 
just how it must be taken at last. Schoolboys fought over again in 
the schoolyards the battles with the heathenish names. The Em- 
peror of the French and the King of Prussia and the Queen of Spain 
and the Queen of England and the Czar and the Sultan and the 
Pope at Rome asked each morning for the war news, and so did 
gaunt cotton-spinners staring in mill towns at tall smokeless chim- 
neys. 

Early in June Halleck was appointed commander-in-chief of all 
the armies of the United States. What to do with McClellan, at 
present summering on the James twenty-five miles below Rich- 
mond, came upon the board. McClellan claimed, quite rightly, that 
here and now, with his army on both sides of the James, he held the 
key position, and that with sufficient reinforcements he could force 
the evacuation of Richmond. Only give him reinforcements with 
which to face Lee’s “‘not less than two hundred thousand!” Recall 
the Army of the Potomac, and it might be some time before it again 
saw Richmond! Halleck deliberated. General Pope had come out 
of the west to take concentrated command of the old forces of Banks, 
Sigel, Frémont, and McDowell. He had an attitude, had Pope, at 
the head of his forty thousand men behind the Rappahannock! The 
armies were too widely separated, McClellan’s location notoriously 
unhealthy. Impossible to furnish reinforcements to the tune asked 
for, Washington might, at any moment, be in peril. It was under- 
stood that Stonewall Jackson had left Richmond on the thirteenth, 
marching toward Gordonsville. 

The James River might be somewhat unhealthy for strangers that 
summer, and Stonewall Jackson had marched toward Gordons- 
ville. The desire at the moment most at the heart of General Robert 
Edward Lee was that General McClellan should be recalled. There- 
fore he guarded Richmond with something less than sixty thousand 
men, and he made rumours to spread of gunboats building, and he 
sent Major-General T. J. Jackson northward with twelve thousand 
men. 

In this July month there was an effect of suspense. The fortress 
was taking muster, telling its strength, soldering its flag to the staff 


CEDAR RUN 547 


and the staff to the keep. The besiegers were gathering; the world 
was watching, expectant of the grimmer struggle. There came a roar 
and clang from the outer walls, from the Mississippi above Vicks- 
burg, from the Georgian coast, from Murfreesboro in Tennessee, 
from Arkansas, from Morgan’s raids in Kentucky. There was fire 
and sound enough, but the battles that were to tell were looked for 
on Virginia soil. Hot and still were the July days, hot and still was 
the air, and charged with a certain sentiment. Thunderbolts were 
forging; all concerned knew that, and very subtly life and death and 
the blue sky and the green leaves came freshlier across the senses. 
Jackson, arriving at Gordonsville the nineteenth of July, found Pope 
before him with forty-seven thousand men. He asked for reinforce- 
ments and Lee, detaching yet another twelve thousand from the 
army at Richmond, sent him A. P. Hill and the Light Division. Hill 
arrived on the second of August, splendid fighter, in his hunting 
shirt, with his red beard! That evening in Jackson’s quarters, some 
one showed him a captured copy of Pope’s Orders, numbers 12 and 
75. He read, crumpled the papers and tossed them aside, then 
turned to Jackson sitting sucking a lemon. “Well, general, here’s 
a new candidate for your attention!’ 

Jackson looked up. “Yes, sir. By God’s blessing he shall have it.” 
He sucked on, studying a map of the country between Slaughter 
Mountain and Manassas which Hotchkiss had made him. In a let- 
ter to his wife from Richmond he had spoken of “ fever and debility” 
attending him during his stay in that section of the country. If it 
were so he had apparently left them in the rear when he came up 
here. He sat now tranquil as a stone wall, in sight of the mountains, 
sucking his lemon and studying his maps. 

This was the second. On the sixth of August Pope began to cross 
the Rappahannock. On the afternoon of the seventh the grey army 
was in motion. All the eighth it was in column, the heat intense, the 
dust stifling, an entanglement of trains and a misunderstanding of 
orders on the part of Hill and Ewell resulting in a confused and re- 
tarded march. Night fell, hot and breathless. Twenty-three thou- 
sand grey soldiers, moving toward Orange Court House, made the 
dark road vocal with statements as to the reeking heat, the dust, the 
condition of their shoes and the impertinence of the cavalry. The 
latter was more irritating than were the flapping soles, the dust in 


548 THE LONG ROLL 


the throat, and the sweat pouring into the eyes. The infantry swore, 
swerving again and again to one side of the narrow road to let small 
bodies of horsemen go by. It was dark, the road going through an 
interminable hot, close wood. Officers and men were liberal in their 
vituperation. “Thank the Lord, it ain’t my arm!” — “Here you 
fellows — damn you! look where you are going! Trampling inno- 
cent bystanders that way! — Why in hell didn’t you stay back 
where you belong?” — “Of course if you’ve positively got to get 
to the front and can’t find any other road it’s our place to give you 
this one! — Just wait a moment and we’ll ask the colonel if we can’t 
lie down. It'll be easier to ride over us that way. — Oh, go to hell!” 

The parties passed, the ranks of the infantry straightened out 
again on the dark road, the column wound on through the hot, mid- 
night wood. More hoof-beats — another party of cavalry to be let 
by! They passed the infantry in the darkness, pushing the broken 
line into the ditch and scrub. In the pitchy blackness an impatient 
command lost at this juncture its temper. The men swore, an 
officer called out to the horsemen a savage “Halt!” The party 
pressed on. The officer furious, caught a bridle rein. “Halt, damn 
you! Stop them, men! Now you cavalry have got to learn a thing 
or two! One is, that the infantry is the important thingin war! It’s 
the aristocracy, damn you! The other is that we were on this road 
first anyhow! Now you just turn out into the woods yourself, and 
the next time I tell you to halt, damn you, halt!” 

“This, sir,”’ said a voice, ‘‘is General Jackson and his staff.” 

The officer stammered forth apologies. “It is all right, sir,” said 
the voice in the darkness. ‘The cavalry must be more careful, but 
colonel, true aristocrats do not curse and swear.” 

An hour later the column halted in open country. A pleasant farm- 
house with a cool, grassy yard surrounded by an ornamental fence, 
white paling gleaming in the waved lights, flung wide its doors to 
Stonewall Jackson. The troops bivouacked around, in field and 
meadow. A rain came up, a chilly downpour. An aide appeared before 
the brigade encamped immediately about the farmhouse. “The 
general says, sir, that the men may take the rail fence over there, 
but the regimental officers are to see that under no circumstances 
is the fence about Mrs. Wilson’s yard to be touched.” 

The night passed. Officers had had a hard day; they slept per- 


CEDAR RUN 549 


haps somewhat soundly, wrapped in their oilcloths, in the chilly 
rain, by the smallest of sputtering camp-fires. The rain stopped 
at three o’clock; the August dawn came up gloriously with a cool 
freshness. Reveille sounded. Stonewall Jackson came from the 
farmhouse, looked about him and then walked across the grassy yard. 
A little later five colonels of five regiments found themselves or- 
dered to report to the general commanding the brigade. 

“Gentlemen, as you came by did you notice the condition of the 
ornamental fence about the yard?” 

““Not especially, sir.” 

“T did, sir. One panel is gone. I suppose the men were tempted. 
It was a confounded cold rain.” 

The brigadier pursed his lips. “Well, colonel, you heard the 
order. All of you heard the order. I regret to say, so did I. Dog- 
gone tiredness and profound slumber are no excuse. You ought — 
we ought — to have heard them at the palings. General Jackson 
has ordered you all under arrest.”’ 

‘Five of us, sir?” 

“Five of you. Damn it, sir, six of us!” 

The five colonels looked at one another and looked at their briga- 
dier. “What would you advise, sir?”’ 

The brigadier was very red. ‘‘I have sent one of my staff to Mrs. 
Wilson, gentlemen, to enquire the cost of the entire ornamental 
fence! I’d advise that we pay, and —if we’ve got any — pay in 
gold.” 

By eight o’clock the column was in motion — a fair day and a fair 
country, with all the harvest fields and the deep wooded hills and 
the August sky. After the rain the roads were just pleasantly wet; 
dewdrops hung on the corn blades, blackberries were ripening, ox- 
eye daisies fringed the banks of red earth. The head of the column, 
coming to a by-road, found awaiting it there an old, plain country 
woman in a faded sunbonnet and faded check apron. She had a 
basket on her arm,and she stepped into the middle of the road before 
Little Sorrel. ‘Air this General Jackson ?”’ 

Stonewall Jackson checked the horse. The staff and a division 
general or two stopped likewise. Behind them came on the infantry 
advance, long and jingling. “Yes, madam, I am General Jackson. 
What can I do for you?” 


550 THE LONG ROLL 


The old woman put down her basket and wiped her hands on her 
apron. ‘General, my son John air in your company. An’ I’ve 
brought him some socks an’ two shirts an’ a chicken, an’ a pot of 
apple butter. An’ ef you’ll call John I’ll be obleeged to you, sir.” 

A young man in the group of horsemen laughed, but stopped 
abruptly as Jackson looked round. The latter turned to the old 
woman with the gentlest blue eyes, and the kindliest slow smile. 
“I’ve got a great many companies, ma’am. They are all along the 
road from Gordonsville. I don’t believe I know your son.” 

But the old woman would not have that. “My lan’, general! I 
reckon you all know John! I reckon John wuz the first man to jine 
the army. He wuz chopping down the big gum by the crick, an’ 
the news come, an’ he chopped on twel the gum wuz down, an’ he 
says, says he, ‘I’ll cut it up for you, Maw, an’ then I’m goin’.’ An’ 
he went. — He’s about your make an’ he has light hair an’ eyes an’ 
he wuz wearing butternut — 

“What is his last name, ma’am?”’ 

“His middle name’s Henry an’ his last name’s Simpson.” 

“In whose brigade is he, and in what regiment?”’ 

But the old woman fio her head. She knew only that he was 
in General Jackson’s company. ‘We never larned to write, John 
an’ me. He wuz powerful good to me — en I reckon he’s been in all 
the battles ’cause he wuz born that way. Some socks, and two shirts 
an’ something to eat — an’ he hez a scar over his eye where a setting 
hen pecked him when he was little — an’ won’t you please find him 
for me, sir?’? The old voice quavered toward tears. 

Stonewall Jackson dismounted, and looked toward the on-coming 
column. The advance was now but a few hundred yards away; the 
whole army to the last wagon train had its orders for expedition. He 
sent for his adjutant. ‘‘Companies from Orange County, sir? Yes, 
there are a number in different regiments and brigades.” 

“Well, you will go, colonel, and halt the advance. See if there 
is an Orange company and a private named John Simpson.” 

There was not. The woman with the basket was old and tired. 
She sat down on the earth beneath a sign post and threw her apron 
over her head. Jackson sent an aide back three miles to the main 
body. ‘‘Captain, find the Orange companies and a private named 
_John Simpson. Bring him here. Tall, light-haired, light eyes, with 


CEDAR RUN 551 


a scar over one eye. If he is not in the main column go on to the 
rear, 

The aide spurred his horse. Jackson explained matters. “ You'll 
have to wait a while, Mrs. Simpson. If your son’s in the army he’ll 
be brought to you. I’ll leave one of my aides with you !” He spoke 
to Little Sorrel and put his hand on the saddle bow. Mrs. Simpson’s 
apron came down. “Please, general, don’t you go! Please, sir, 
you stay! They won’t know him like you will! They’ll just come 
back an’ say they can’t find him! — An’ I got to see John — I just 
got to! — Don’t go, please, sir! Ef ’t was your mother —”’ 

Stonewall Jackson and his army waited for half an hour while 
John Simpson was looked for. At the end of that time the cross 
roads saw him coming, riding behind the aide. Tall and lank, in 
butternut still, and red as a beet, he slipped from the horse, and 
saluted the general, then, almost crying, gathered up the checked 
apron and the sunbonnet and the basket and the old woman. 
“Maw, Maw! jes’ look what you have done! Danged ef you have n’t 
stopped the whole army! Everybody cryin’ out ‘John Simpson’!”’ 

On went the column through the bright August forenoon. The day 
grew hot and the dust whirled up, and the cavalry skirmished at in- 
tervals with detached blue clouds of horsemen. On the horizon ap- 
peared at some distance a conical mountain. “‘What’s that sugar 
loaf over there?’”’ ‘‘That’s Slaughter’s Mountain south of Cul- 
peper. Cedar Run’s beyond.” 

The day wore on. Slaughter Mountain grew larger. The country 
between was lovely, green and rolling; despite the heat and the 
dust and the delay the troops were in spirits. They were going 
against Major-General John Pope and they liked the job. The old 
Army of the Valley, now a part of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
rather admired Shields, had no especial objection to McDowell, 
and felt a real gratitude toward Mr. Commissary Banks, but it 
was prepared to fight Pope with a vigour born of detestation. Aman 
of the old Army, marching with Ewell, began to sing: — 

“ Pope told a flattering talé 
Which proved to be bravado, 


About the streams that spout like ale 
On the Llano Estacado! 


“That’s the Staked Plains, you know. Awful hot out there! Pretty 


552 THE LONG ROLL 


hot here, too. Look at them lovely roasting ears! Can’t touch ’em. 
Old Jack says so. Pope may live on the country, but we may n’t.”’ 
“That mountain is getting pretty big.” “Hello! Just a cavalry 
scrimmage — Hello! hello! Artillery’s more serious!” ‘‘ Boys, boys! 
we’ve struck Headquarters-in-the-saddle! — What’s that awful 
noise? — Old Jack ’s coming — Old Jack ’s coming to the front! — 
Mercy! did n’t know even we could cheer like that! — Yaaaih! 
Yaaaaaaihhh! Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Yaaaaaaii- 
iihhh!”’ 

As the day declined the battle swelled in smoke and thunder. The 
blue batteries were well placed, and against them thundered twenty- 
six grey rifled guns: two Parrotts of Rockbridge with a gun of Car- 
penter’s appeared at the top of the hill, tore down the long slope 
and came into battery in an open field, skirted by a wood. Behind 
was the Stonewall Brigade in column of regiments. The guns were 
placed en échelon, the horses taken away, the ball opened with canis- 
ter. Immediately the Federal guns answered, got the range of the 
grey, and began to do deadly mischief. All around young trees were 
cut off short. The shells came, thick, black, and screaming. The 
place proved fatal to officers. Carpenter was struck in the head by 
a piece of shell — mortally wounded. The chief of artillery, Major 
Snowden Andrews fell, desperately injured, then Captain Caskie 
was hurt, then Lieutenant Graham. The gunners worked like mad. 
The guns thundered, recoiled, thundered again. The blue shells 
arrived in a deadly stream. All was smoke, whistling limbs of trees, 
glare and roar. General Winder came up on foot. Standing by a 
grey Parrott he tried with his field glass to make out the Federal 
batteries. Lowering the glass he shouted some direction to the men 
about the gun below him. The noise was hideous, deafening. See- 
ing that he was not understood he raised his arm and hollowed his 
hand above his mouth. A shell passed beneath his arm, through his 
side. He fell stiffly back, mangled and dying. 

There was a thick piece of woods, deep and dark, stretching west- 
ward. The left of Jackson’s division rested here. Ewell’s brigades and 
batteries were on the mountain slope; the Light Division, A. P. Hill 
in his red battle shirt at its head, not yet up; Jubal Early forming 
a line of battle in the rolling fields. An aide came to “ Old Jube.” 
“General Jackson’s compliments to General Early, and he says 


CEDAR RUN 553 


you will advance on the enemy, and General Winder’s troops will 
support you.”’ Early had a thin, high, drawling voice. “‘My compli- 
ments to General Jackson, and tell him I will do it.” 

The Stonewall Brigade, drawn up in the rear of the Artillery, stood 
waiting its orders from Winder. There came a rumor. “ The general 
is killed! General Winder is killed!’’ The Stonewall chose to be in- 
credulous. “It is not so! We don’t believe it.” 

The 65th, cut to pieces at White Oak Swamp, had renewed it- 
self. Recruits — boys and elderly men — a few melancholy con- 
scripts, a number of transferals from full commands had closed its 
ranks. The 65th, smaller now, of diluted quality, but even so, 
dogged and promising well, —the 65th, waiting on the edge of a 
wheat field, looked across it to Taliaferro’s and Campbell’s brigades 
and the dark wood in front. Billy Maydew was sergeant now and 
Matthew Coffin was first lieutenant of Company A. The two had 
some talk under a big walnut tree. 

“ Artillery’s been shouting for two hours,” said Coffin. ‘‘They’ve 
got a hell lot of cavalry, too, but if there’s any infantry I can’t 
see it.” 

“There air a message gone to Campbell and Taliaferro. I heard 
Old Jack send it. ‘Look well to your left,’ he says, says he. That 
thar wood’s the left,” said Billy. “It looks lonesomer than lone- 
some, but thar! when lonesome things do blaze out they blaze out 
the worst!” 

The colonel of the 65th — Colonel Erskine — came along the 
front. “It’s too true, men. We’ve lost General Winder. Well, 
we ll avenge him! — Look! there is Jubal Early advancing!”’ 

Early’s line of battle was a beautiful sight. It moved through 
the fields and up a gentle hillside, and pushed before it bright clus- 
ters of Federal cavalry. When the grey lines came to the hilltop 
the Federal batteries opened fiercely. Early posted Dement and 
Brown and loudly answered. To the left rolled great wheat fields, 
the yellow grain standing in shocks. Here gathered the beautiful 
blue cavalry, many and gallant. Ewell with Trimble’s South Caro- 
linians and Harry Hayes’s Louisianians held the slope of the moun- 
tain, and from these heights bellowed Latimer’s guns. Over hill and 
vale the Light Division was seen coming, ten thousand men in grey 
led by A. P. Hill. 


554 THE LONG ROLL 


“Tt surely air a sight to see,” said Billy. “I never even dreamed it, 
back thar on Thunder Run.”’ 

“There the Yankees come!’ cried Coffin. ‘“‘There! a stream of 
them — up that narrow valley! — Now — now — now Early has 
touched them! — Damn you, Billy! What’s the matter ?”’ 

“Tt’s the wood,” answered Billy. ‘“’Thar’s something coming out 
of the lonesome wood.” : 

On the left the rst and 42d Virginia were the advance regiments. 
Out of the forest, startling, unexpected, burst a long blue battle 
line. Banks, a brave man if not a wise one, interpreted Pope’s orders 
somewhat to suit himself, and attacked without waiting for Sigel 
or McDowell. In this instance valor seemed likely to prove the 
better part of discretion. Of the grey generals, Hill was not up, 
Early was hotly engaged, the artillery fire, grey and blue alike, 
sweeping the defile before Ewell kept him on the mountain side. 
Bayonets fixed, bright colours tossing, skirmishers advanced, on 
with verve and determination came Banks’s attack. Asit crossed the 
yellow stubble field Taliaferro and Campbell, startled by the ap- 
parition but steady, poured in a withering fire. But the blue came 
on, swung its right and partly surrounded the 1st Virginia. Amid 
a hell of shots, bayonet work, shouts, and cries rst Virginia broke; 
fell back upon the 42d, that in its turn was overwhelmed. Down 
came the blue wave on Taliaferro’s flank. The wheat field filled 
with uproar. Taliaferro broke, Campbell broke. 

The Stonewall stirred like leaves in autumn. Ronald, colonel of 
the 2d, commanding in Winder’s place, made with despatch a line 
of battle. The smoke was everywhere, rolling and thick. Out of it 
came abruptly a voice. ‘I have always depended upon this brigade. 
Forward!” 

Billy had an impression of wheat stubble beneath his feet, wheat 
stubble thick strewn with men, silent or lamentably crying out, 
and about his ears a whistling storm of minies. There was, too, a 
whirl of grey forms. There was no alignment — regiments were 
dashed to pieces — everybody was mixed up. It was like an over- 
turned beehive. Then in the swirling smoke, in the swarm and 
shouting and grey rout, he saw Little Sorrel, and Stonewall Jackson 
standing in his stirrups. He had drawn his sabre; it flashed above 
his head like a gleam from the sinking sun. Billy spoke aloud. “I’ve 


CEDAR RUN 555 


been with him from the first, and this air the first time I ever saw 
him do that.”” As he spoke he caught hold of a fleeing grey soldier. 
“Stand still and fight! Thar ain’t nothing in the rear but damned 
safety!” 

The grey surge hung poised, the tide one moment between ebb 
and flow. The noise was hellish; sounds of triumph, sounds of panic, 
of anger, encouragement, appeal, despair, woe and pain, with the 
callous roar of musketry and the loud indifference of the guns. 
Aboveit all the man on the quaint war horse made himself heard. 
From the blue line of steel above his head, from the eyes below the 
forage cap, from the bearded lips, from the whole man there poured 
a magic control. He shouted and his voice mastered the storm. 
“Rally, brave men! Rally and follow me! I will lead you. Jackson 
will lead you. Rally! Rally!” 

Billy saw the 21st Virginia, what was left of it, swing suddenly 
around, give the Confederate yell, and dash itself against the blue. 
Taliaferro rallied, Campbell rallied, the Stonewall itself under Ron- 
ald rallied. The first of the Light Division, Branch’s North Caro- 
linians came on with a shout, and Thomas’s Georgians and Lane 
and Archer and Pender. Early was up, Ewell sweeping down from 
the mountain. Jackson came along the restored front. The sol- 
diers greeted him with a shout that tore the welkin. He touched 
the forage cap. ‘“‘Give them the bayonet! Give them the bayonet! 
Forward, and drive them!” 

The cavalry with Banks was fine and staunch. At this moment 
it undertook a charge useless but magnificent. With clarion sound, 
with tossing colours, with huzzas and waving sabres, a glorious and 
fearful sight, the cavalry rushed diagonally across the trampled 
field, its flank exposed to the North Carolinians. These opened a 
blasting fire while Taliaferro’s brigade met it full, and the 13th 
Virginia, couched behind a grey zigzag of fence, gave volley after 
volley. Little more than half of those horsemen returned. 

Dusk fell and the blue were in full retreat. After them swept the 
grey — the Light Division, Jubal Early, Ewell, Jackson’s own. 
In the corn fields, in the wheat fields, in the forest thick, thick! lay 
the dead and wounded, three thousand men, grey and blue, fallen 
in that fight of an hour and a half. The blue crossed Cedar Run, 
the grey crossed it after them. The moon, just past the full, rose 


556 THE LONG ROLL 


above the hilltops. On the whole the summer night was light enough. 
Stonewall Jackson brought up two fresh brigades and with Pegram’s 
battery pressed on by moonlight. That dauntless artillerist, a boy 
in years, an old wise man in command, found the general on Little 
Sorrel pounding beside him for some time through the moonlit night. 
Jackson spoke but once. “Delightful excitement,” he said. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 


mishes, most wearily winding through a pitch black night, 

heard the “Halt!” with rejoicing. “‘Old Jack be thanked! 
So we ain’t turning on our tail and going back through Thorough- 
fare Gap after all! See anything of Marse Robert? — Go away! 
he ain’t any nearer than White Plains. He and Longstreet won’t 
get through Thoroughfare until to-morrow — Break ranks! Oh 
Lord, yes! with pleasure.” 

Under foot there was rough, somewhat rolling ground. In the 
dark night men dropped down without particularity as to couch 
or bedchamber. Nature and the time combined to spread for them 
a long and echoing series of sleeping rooms, carpeted and tapes- 
tried according to Nature’s whim, vaulted with whistling storm or 
drift of clouds or pageantry of stars. The troops took the quarters 
indicated sometimes with, sometimes without remark. To-night 
there was little speech of any kind before falling into dreamless 
slumber. ‘O hell! Hungry as a dog!’”’ — “Me, too!” — “Can't 
you just see Manassas Junction and Stuart’s and Trimble’s fellows 
gorging themselves? Biscuit and cake and pickles and ‘desecrated’ 
vegetables and canned peaches and sardines and jam and coffee! — 
freight cars and wagons and storehouses just filled with jam and 
coffee and canned peaches and cigars and—” “TI wish that fool 
would hush! I was n’t hungry before!’’ — ‘“‘and nice cozy fires, and 
rashers of bacon broiling, and plenty of coffee, and all around just 
like daisies in the field, clean new shirts, and drawers and socks, 
and handkerchiefs and shoes and writing paper and soap.” — “ Will 
you go to hell and stop talking as you go?” — “Seems somehow 
an awful lonely place, boys! — dark and a wind. Hear that whip- 
poorwill? Just twenty thousand men sloshin’ round — and Pope 
may be right over there by the whippoorwill. Jarrow says that with 
McCall and Heintzelman and Fitz John Porter, there are seventy 


ce column, after an extraordinary march attended by skir- 


558 THE LONG ROLL 


thousand of them. Well? They ’ve got Headquarters-in-the-saddle 
and we’ve got Stonewall Jackson — That’s so! that’s so! Good- 
night.” 

Dawn came calmly up, dawn of the twenty-eighth of August. The 
ghostly trumpets blew — the grey soldiers stirred and rose. In the 
sky were yet a star or two and a pale quarter moon. These slowly 
faded and the faintest coral tinge overspread that far and cold east- 
ern heaven. The men were busied about breakfast, but now this 
group and presently that suspended operations. ‘‘What’s there 
about this place anyhow? It has an awful, familiar look. The 
stream and the stone bridge and the woods and the hill — the Henry 
Hill. Good God! it’s the field of Manassas!”’ 

The field of Manassas, in the half light, somehow inspired a faint 
awe, a creeping horror. “God! how young we were that day! It 
seems so long ago, and yet it comes back. Do you remember how we 
crashed together at the Stone Bridge? There’s the Mathews Hill 
where we first met Sykes and Ricketts — seen them often since. 
The Henry Hill —there’s the house — Mrs. Henry was killed. 
Hampton and Cary came along there and Beauregard with his 
sword out and Old Joe swinging the colours high, restoring the bat- 
tle! — and Kirby Smith, just in time — just in time, and the yell 
his column gave! Next day we thought the war was over.” — “I 
didn’t.” — “ Yes, you did! You said, ‘ Well, boys, we’re gding back to 
every day, but by jiminy! we’ve got something to tell our grand- 
children!’ The ravine running up there — that was where Bee was 
killed! Bee! I can see him now. Then we were over there.”’ “ Yes, on 
the hilltop by the pine wood. ‘Jackson standing like a stone wall.’ 
Look, the light’s touching it. Boys, I could cry, just as easy —”’ 

The August morning strengthened. ‘‘Our guns were over there by 
the charred trees. There’s where we charged, there’s where we 
came down on Griffin and Ricketts! — the 33d, the 65th. The 65th 
mace its aeht there Richard Cleave —* “Don tl —— "Well 
that’s where we came down on Griffin and Ricketts. Manassas! 
Reckon Old Jack and Marse Robert want a second battle of Manas- 
sas?” 

The light grew full. ‘‘Ewell’s over there — A. P. Hill’s over 
there. All together, north of the Warrenton turnpike. Where’s 
Marse Robert and Longstreet?”’ | 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS «559 


Colonel Fauquier Cary, riding by, heard the last remark and 
answered it. ‘‘Marse Robert and Longstreet are marching by the 
road we’ve marched before them. To-night, perhaps, we’ll be again 
a united family.” 

‘Colonel, are we going to have a battle?”’ 

“T wasn’t at the council, friends, but I can tell you what I 
think.” 

“Yes, yes! We think that you think pretty straight —”’ 

“McCall and Heintzelman and Fitz John Porter have joined 
General Pope.” 

| Ys... SO we hear. 

“And others of the Army of the Potomac are on the way.” 

“Yes, undoubtedly.” 

“But are not here yet.” 

“ No.” 

“Well, then, I think that the thing above all others that General 
Lee wants is an immediate battle.” 

He rode on. The men to whom he had been speaking looked after 
him approvingly. “‘He’s a fine piece of steel! Always liked that 
whole family — Is n’t hea cousin of ? Yes. Wonder what he 
thinks about that matter! Heigho! Look at the stealing light and 
the grey shadows! Manassas!”’ 

Cary, riding by Ewell’s lines, came upon Maury Stafford lying 
stretched beneath an oak, studying, too, the old battlefield. The sun 
was up; the morning cool, fresh, and pure. Dismounting, Cary 
seated himself beside the other. ‘“‘ You were not in the battle here? 
On the Peninsula, were you not?”’ 

“Yes, with Magruder. Look at that shaft of light.” 

“Yes. It strikes the crest of the hill — just where was the Stone- 
wall Brigade.”’ 

Silence fell. The two sat, brooding over the scene, each with his 
own thoughts. ‘‘ This field will be red again,” said Stafford at last. 

“No doubt. Yes, red again. I look for heavy fighting.” 

““T saw you when you came in with A. P. Hill on the second. But 
we have not spoken together, I think, since Richmond.” 

“No,” said Cary. “‘ Not since Richmond.” 

“One of your men told me that, coming up, you stopped in 
Albemarle.” 





560 THE LONG ROLL 


“‘Ves, I went home for a few hours.” 

“All at Greenwood are well and — happy?” 

“All at Greenwood are well. Southern women are not precisely 
happy. They are, however, extremely courageous.” 

“May I ask if Miss Cary is at Greenwood?” 

“‘She remained at her work in Richmond through July. Then the 
need at the hospital lessening, she went home. Yes, she is at Green- 
wood.” 

“Thank you. I am going to ask another question. Answer it or 
not as you see fit. Does she know that — most unfortunately — it 
was I who carried that order from General Jackson to General 
Winder?” 

“T do not think that she knows it.’”? He rose. ‘The bugles are 
sounding. I must get back to Hill. General Lee will be up, I hope, 
to-night. Until he comes we are rather in the lion’s mouth. Happily 
John Pope is hardly the desert king.”’ He mounted his horse, and 
went. Stafford laid himself down beneath the oak, looked sideways a 
moment at Bull Run and the hills and the woods, then flung his arm 
upward and across his eyes, and went in mind to Greenwood. 

The day passed in a certain still and steely watchfulness. In the 
August afternoon, Jeb Stuart, feather in hat, around his horse’s neck 
a garland of purple ironweed and yarrow, rode into the lines and 
spoke for ten minutes with General Jackson, then spurred away to 
the Warrenton turnpike. Almost immediately Ewell’s and Talia- 
ferro’s divisions were under arms and moving north. 

Near Groveton they struck the force they were going against — 
King’s division of McDowell’s corps moving tranquilly toward 
Centreville. The long blue column — Doubleday, Patrick, Gibbon, 
and Hatch’s brigades — showed its flank. It moved steadily, with 
jingle and creak of accoutrements, with soldier chat and laughter, 
with a band playing a quickstep, with the rays of the declining sun 
bright on gun-stock and bayonet, and with the deep rumble of the 
accompanying batteries. The head of the column came in the gold 
light to a farmhouse and an apple orchard. Out of the peace and 
repose of the scene burst a roar of grey artillery. 

The fight was fierce and bloody, and marked by a certain savage 
picturesqueness. Gibbon and Doubleday somehow deployed and 
seized a portion of the orchard. The grey held the farmhouse and 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 561 


the larger part of the fair, fruit-bearing slopes. The blue brought 
their artillery into action. The grey batteries, posted high, threw 
their shot and shell over the heads of the grey skirmishers into the 
opposing ranks: Wooding, Poague, and Carpenter did well; and 
then, thundering through the woods, came John Pelham of Stuart’s 
Horse Artillery, and he, too, did well. 

As for the infantry, grey and blue, they were seasoned troops. 
There was no charging this golden afternoon. They merely stood, 
blue and grey, one hundred yards apart, in the sunset-flooded apple 
orchard, and then in a twilight apple orchard, and then in an apple 
orchard with the stars conceivably shining above the roof of smoke, 
and directed each against the other a great storm of musketry, 
round shot, and canister. 

It lasted two and a half hours, that tornado, and it never relaxed 
in intensity. It was a bitter fight, and there was bitter loss. Double- 
day and Gibbon suffered fearfully, and Ewell and Taliaferro suf- 
fered. Grey and blue, they stood grimly, and the tornado raged. 
The ghosts of the quiet husbandmen who had planted the orchard, 
of the lovers who may have walked there, of the children who must 
have played beneath the trees — these were scared far, far from the 
old peaceful haunt. It was a bitter fight. 

Stafford was beside Ewell when the latter fell, a shell dreadfully 
shattering his leg. The younger man caught him, drew him quite 
from poor old Rifle, and with the help of the men about got him be- 
hind the slight, slight shelter of one of the little curtsying trees. 
Old Dick’s face twitched, but he could speak. “Of course I’ve lost 
that leg! ! ! Old Jackson is n’t around, is he? Never 
mind! Occasion must excuse. Go along, gentlemen. Need you all 
there. Doctors and chaplains and the teamsters, and Dick Ewell 
will forgather all right !——! Damn you, Maury, I don’t want 
you va stay! What’s that that man says? Taliaferro badly wounded 
! Gentlemen, one and all you are ordered back to 
your ae I’ve lost a leg, oa I’m not going to lose this battle! ”’ 

Night came with each stark battle line engaged in giving and 
receiving as deadly a bombardment as might well be conceived. 
The orchard grew a place tawny and red and roaring with sound. 
And then at nine o’clock the sound dwindled and the light sank. 
The blue withdrew in good order, taking with them their wounded. 











eho es THE LONG ROLL 


The battle was drawn, the grey rested on the field, the loss of both 
was heavy. 

Back of the apple orchard, on the long natural terrace where he 
had posted his six guns, that tall, blond, very youthful officer whom, 
a littlelater, Stuart called “the heroic chivalric Pelham,” whom Lee 
called “the gallant Pelham,” of whom Stonewall Jackson said, 
‘““Every army should have a Pelham on each flank’ — Major John 
Pelham surveyed the havoc among his men and horses. Then like 
a good and able leader, he brought matters shipshape, and later 
announced that the Horse Artillery would stay where it was for 
the night. 

The farmhouse in the orchard had been turned into a field hos- 
pital. Thither Pelham’s wounded were borne. Of the hurt horses 
those that might be saved were carefully tended, the others shot. 
The pickets were placed. Fires were kindled, and from a supply 
wagon somewhere in the rear scanty rations brought. An embassy 
went to the farmhouse. ‘‘Ma’am, the major — Major Pelham — 
says kin we please have a few roasting ears?’ The embassy re- 
turned. “She says, sir, just to help ourselves. Corn, apples — any- 
thing we want, and she wishes it were more!” 

The six guns gleamed red in the light of the kindled fires. The 
men sat or lay between them, tasting rest after battle. Below this 
platform,in the orchard and on the turnpike and in the woods be- 
yond, showed also fires and moving lights. The air was yet smoky, 
the night close and warm. There were no tents nor roofs of any 
nature. Officers and men rested in the open beneath the August 
stars. Pelham had a log beneath a Lombardy poplar, with a wide 
outlook toward the old field of Manassas. Here he taiked with one of 
his captains. ‘Too many men lost! I feel it through and through 
that there is going to be heavy fighting. We’ll have to fill up some- 
how.” 

“Everybody from this region’s in already. We might get some 
fifteen-year-olds or some sixty-five-year-olds, though, or we might 
ask the department for conscripts —”’ 

“Don’t like the latter material. Prefer the first. Well, we’ll 
think about it to-morrow — It’s late, late, Haralson! Good- 
night.” 

“Wait,” said Haralson. ‘Here’s a man wants to speak to you.” 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 563 


Running up the hillside, from the platform where were the guns 
to a little line of woods dark against the starlit sky, was a cornfield — 
between it and the log and the poplar only a little grassy depression. 
A man had come out of the cornfield. He stood ten feet away — 
a countryman apparently, poorly dressed. 

“Well, who are you?” demanded Pelham, “and how did you get 
in my lines?” 

“T ’ve been,” said the man, “‘tramping it over from the mountains. 
And when I got into this county I found it chock full of armies. I 
did n’t want to be taken up by the Yankees, and so I’ve been mostly 
travelling by night. I was in that wood up there while you all were 
fighting. I had a good view of the battle. When it was over I said 
to myself, ‘After all they ’re my folk,’ and I came down through the 
corn. I was lying there between the stalks; I heard you say you 
needed gunners. I said to myself, ‘I might as well join nowas later. 
We’ve all got to join one way or another, that’s clear,’ and so I 
thought, sir, I’d join you —”’ 

““Why have n’t you ‘joined,’ as you call it, before?” 

“T’ve been right sick for a year or more, sir. I got a blow on the 
head in a saw mill on Briony Creek and it made me just as useless 
as a bit of pith. The doctor says I am all right now, sir. I got tired 
of staying on Briony —”’ 

“Do you know anything about guns ?”’ 

*‘T know all about a shot-gun. I could learn the other.” 

“What’s your name ?” 

“Philip Deaderick.” 

“Well, come into the firelight, Deaderick, so that I can see you.” 

Deaderick came, showed a powerful figure, and a steady bearded 
face. ‘‘ Well,” said the Alabamian, “the blow on your head does n’t 
seem to have put you out of the running! I’ll try you, Deaderick.”’ 

“T am much obliged to you, sir.” 

“T have n’t any awkward squad into which to put you. You’ll 
have to learn, and learn quickly, by watching the others. Take 
him and enroll him, Haralson, and turn him over to Dreux and the 
Howitzer. Now, Deaderick, the Horse Artillery is heaven to a good 
man who does his duty, and it’s hell to the other kind. I advise you 
to try for heaven. That’s all. Good-night.” 

Day broke over the field of Groveton, over the plains of Manassas. 


564 THE LONG ROLL 


Stonewall Jackson moved in force westward from the’‘old battle- 
ground. South of Bull Run, between Young’s Branch and Stony 
Ridge, ran an unfinished railroad. It was bordered by woods and 
rolling fields. There were alternate embankments and deep railroad 
cuts. Behind was the long ridge and Catharpin Run, in front, 
sloping gently tothe little stream, green fields broken to the north 
by one deep wood. Stonewall Jackson laid his hand on the rail- 
road with those deep cuts and on the rough and rising ground be- 
yond. In the red dawn there stretched a battle front of nearly two 
miles. A. P. Hill had the left. Trimble and Lawton of Ewell’s had 
the centre, Jackson’s own division the right, Jubal Early and Forno 
of Ewell’s a detached force on this wing. There were forty guns, 
and they were ranged along the rocky ridge behind the infantry. 
Jeb Stuart guarded the flanks. 

The chill moisture of the morning, the dew-drenched earth, the 
quiet woods, the rose light in the sky — the troops moving here and 
there to their assigned positions, exchanged opinions. “Ain’t it like 
the twenty-first of July, 1861?” — “It air and it ain’t — mostly 
ain’t!’? —‘‘That’s true! Hello! they are going to give us the railroad 
cut! God bless the Manassas Railroad Company! If we’d dug a 
whole day we could n’t have dug sucha ditchas that!’ — “Look at 
the boys behind the embankment! Well, if that is n’t the jim-dan- 
diest breastwork! ’N look at the forty guns up there against the 
sky!’ — “Better tear those vines away from the edge. Pretty, 
are n’t they? All the blue morning glories. Regiment’s swung off 
toward Manassas Junction! Nowif Longstreet should come up!’”’ — 
“Maybe he will. Would n’t it be exciting? Come up with a yell same 
as Kirby Smith did last year! Wonder where the Yankees are?”’ 
‘“‘Somewhere in the woods, the whole hell lot of them.” — “Some of 
them are n’t a hell lot. Some of them are right fine. Down on the 
Chickahominy I acquired a real respect for the Army of the Po- 
tomac — and a lot of it’ll be here to-day. Yes, sir, I like Fitz John 
Porter and Sykes and Reynolds and a lot of them first rate! They 
can’t help being commanded by The-Man-without-a-Rear. That’s 
Washington’s fault, not theirs.” — “ Yes, sir, Ricketts and Meade 
and Kearney and a lot of them are all right.’’ — “Good Lord, what a 
shout! That’s either Old Jack or a rabbit.’’ — “It’s Old Jack! It’s Old 
Jack! He’s coming along the front. Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 565 


Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! He’s passed. O God! I wish that 
Bee and Bartow and all that fell here could see him and us now.” 
—‘There’s Stuart passing through the fields. What guns are those 
going up Stony Ridge ? — Pelham and the Horse Artillery.’’ — 
“Listen! Bugles! There they come! There they come! Over the 
Henry Hill.” Attention! 

About the middle of the morning the cannonading ceased. 
““There’s a movement this way,” said A. P. Hill on the left. “They 
mean toturnus. They have ploughed this wood with shells, and now 
they ’re coming to sowit. All right, men! General Jackson’s looking! 
—and General Lee will be here to-night to tell the story to. I 
suppose you’d like Marse Robert to say, ‘Well done!’ All right, then, 
do well! —I don’t think we’re any too rich, Garrett, in ammuni- 
tion. Better go tell General Jackson so.” 

The men talked, Hill’s men and Ewell’s men on Hill’s right — not 
volubly, but with slow appreciation. “Reynolds? Like Reynolds 
all right. Milroy? Don’t care for the gentleman. Sigel — Schurz — 
Schenck — Steinwehr? Nein. Nein! Wonder if they remember 
Cross Keys ?”’ — “‘ They’ve got a powerful long line. There is n’t but 
one thing I envy them and that’s those beautiful batteries. I don’t 
envy them their good food, and their good, whole clothes or any- 
thing but the guns.’ —“‘H’m, I don’t envy them anything — our 
batteries are doing all right! We’ve got a lot of their guns, and to- 
night we’ll have more. Artillery’s done fine to-day.”’ —‘‘So it has! 
so it has!’ — ‘‘Listen, they’re opening again. That’s Pelham — 
now Pegram — now Washington Artillery — now Rockbridge! ” 
— “Yes sir, yes sir! We’re all right. We’re ready. Music! They 
always come on with music. Funny! but they ’ve got the bands. 
What are they playing? Never heard it before. Think it’s ‘What 
are the Wild Waves Saying ?’” — “I think it’s ‘When this Cruel 
War is Over.’ ”’ — ‘‘ Go ’way, you boys were n’t in the Valley! We’ve 
‘heard it several times. It’s ‘Der Wacht am Rhein.’” — “All right, 
sir! All right. Now!” 

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, after the third great 
blue charge, Edward Cary, lips blackened from tearing cartridges, 
lock and barrel of his rifle hot within his hands, his cap shot away, his 
sleeve torn to ribbons where he had bared and bandaged a flesh 
wound in the arm, Edward Cary straightened himself and wiped 


566 THE LONG ROLL 


away the sweat and powder grime which blinded him. An officer’s 
voice came out of the murk. ‘The general asks for volunteers to 
strip the field of cartridges.” 

There were four men lying together, killed by the same shell. 
The head of one was gone, the legs of another; the third was dis- 
embowelled, the fourth had his breast crushed in. Their cartridge 
boxes when opened were found to be half full. Edward emptied 
them into the haversack he carried and went on to the next. This 
was a boy of sixteen, not dead yet, moaning like a wounded hound. 
Edward gave him the little water that was in his canteen, took four 
cartridges from his box, and crept on. A minie sang by him, struck 
a yard away, full in the forehead of the dead man toward Phe he 
was making. The dead man had a smile upon his lips; it was as 
though he mocked the bullet. All the field running back from the 
railroad cuts and embankment was overstormed by shot and shell, 
and everywhere from the field rose groans and cries for water. The 
word ‘‘water’”’ never ceased from use. Water! — Water, Water! — 
Water! — Water! On it went, mournfully, like a wind. — Water! — 
Water! Edward gathered cartridges steadily. All manner of things 
were wont to come into his mind. Just now it was a certain field 
behind Greenwood covered with blackberry bushes — and the hot 
August sunshine — and he and Easter’s Jim gathering blackberries 
while Mammy watched from -beneath a tree. He heard again the 
little thud of the berries into the bucket. He took the cartridges from 
two young men — brothers from the resemblance and from the 
fact that, falling together, one, the younger, had pillowed his head on 
the other’s breast, while the elder’s arm was around him. They lay 
like children in sleep. The next man was elderly, a lonely, rugged- 
looking person with a face slightly contorted and a great hole in his 
breast. The next that Edward came to was badly hurt, but not too 
badly to take an interest. ‘‘Cartridges ? — yes, five. I’m awful 
thirsty! — Well, never mind. Maybe it will rain. Who’s charging | 
now? Heintzelman, Kearney, and Reno — Got ’emall? You can 
draw one from my gun, too. I was just loading when I got hit. Well, 
sorry you got to go! It’s mighty lonely lying here.”’ 

Edward returned to the front, gave up his haversack, and got an- 
other. As he turned to resume the cartridge quest there arose a cry. 
“Steady, men! steady! Hooker has n’t had enough!”’ Edward, too, 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 567 


saw the blue wall coming through the woods on the other side of the 
railroad. He took a musket from a dead man near by and with all the 
other grey soldiers lay flat in the grass above the cut. Hooker came 
within range — within close range. The long grey front sprang to its 
feet and fired, dropped and loaded, rose and fired. A leaden storm 
visited the wood across the track. The August grass was long and 
dry. Sparks set it afire. Flames arose and caught the oak scrub. 
Through it all and through the storm of bullets the blue line burst. It 
came down on the unfinished track, it crossed, it leaped up the ten- 
foot bank of earth, it clanged against the grey line atop. The grey 
gave back, the colours fell and rose; the air rocked, so loud was the 
din. Stonewall Jackson appeared. “General Hill, orderin your sec- 
ond line.”” Field’s Virginians, Thomas’s Georgians charged forward. 
They yelled, all their rifles flashed at once, they drove Hooker down 
into the cut, across the track, up into the burning brushwood and 
the smoke-filled woods. But the blue were staunch and seasoned 
troops; they re-formed, they cheered. Hooker brought up a fresh 
brigade. They charged again. Down from the woods plunged the blue 
wave, through the fire, down the bank, across and up. Again din and 
smoke and flame, all invading, monstrous. Jackson’s voice rose 
higher. ‘General Hill, order in General Pender.” 

North Carolina was, first and last, a stark fighter. Together with 
Gregg and Field and Thomas, Pender drove Hooker again down the 
red escarpment, across the railroad, through the burning brush, into 
the wood; even drove him out of the wood, took a battery and 
dashed into the open beyond. Then from the hills the blue artillery 
opened and from the plains below volleyed fresh infantry. Pender 
was borne back through the wood, across the railroad, up the red 
side of the cut. 

Hooker had a brigade in column behind a tree-clad hill. Screened 
from sight it now moved forward, swift and silent, then with sud- 
denness broke from the wood in a splendid charge. With a gleam of 
bayonets, with a flash of colours, with a loud hurrah, with a stag- 
gering volley its regiments plunged into the cut, swarmed up the 
red side and fell upon A. P. Hill’s weakened lines. The grey wav- 
ered. Stonewall Jackson’s voice was heard again. “General Hill, I 
have ordered up Forno from the right and a regiment of Lawton’s.” 
He jerked his hand into the air. “Here they are. Colonel Forno, 
give them the bayonet!” 





568 THE LONG ROLL 


Louisiana and Georgia swept forward, Tennessee, Alabama, and 
Virginia supporting. They swept Grover’s brigade down and back. 
There was bitter fighting, hand-to-hand, horrible work: the dead lay 
in the railroad cut thick as fallen leaves. The dead lay thick on 
either bank and thick in the grass that was afire and thick in the 
smoky wood. The blue gave way, went back; the grey returned to 
their lines. 

Edward went again for cartridges. He was beside Gregg’s South 
Carolinians when a courier came up. ‘‘General Jackson wishes to 
know each brigade’s amount of ammunition,” and he heard Gregg’s 
answer, “‘Tell General Jackson that this brigade has one round to 
the man, but I’ll hold the position with the bayonet.” Edward 
gleaned steadily. ‘‘Water! water! water!” cried the field. ‘“O God! 
water!”’ 

It was growing late, the long, hot day declining. There had been 
nine hours of fighting. ‘Nine hours — ninety hours — ninety 
minutes?’’ thought Edward. ‘‘Time’s plastic like everything else. 
Double it, fold it back on itself, stretch it out, do anything with it —” 
He took the cartridges from a trunk of a man, crept on to a soldier 
shot through the hip. The latter clutched him with a blackened 
hand. “Has Marse Robert come? Has General Lee come ?”’ 

‘““They say he has. Over there on Stuart’s Hill, holding Reynolds 
and McDowell and Fitz John Porter in check.” 

The man fell back. “Oh, then it is all right. Stonewall Jackson 
and Robert Edward Lee. It’s all right —”’ He spoke drowsily. 
“Tt’s all right. I’ll go to sleep.” 

Edward looking sideways toward Stony Ridge saw the forty guns 
black against the sun. As he looked they blazed and thundered. He 
turned his eyes. Kearney and Reno, five brigades, were coming at 
a double across the open. As he looked they broke into the charge. 
With his bag of cartridges he made for the nearest grey line. The 
blue came on, a formidable wave indeed. Stonewall Jackson rode 
along the grey front. 

“Men, General Early and two regiments of Lawton’s are on their 
way. You must stand it till they come. If you have only one cart- 
ridge, save it until they are up from the cut. Then fire, and use 
your bayonets. Don’t cheer! It makes your hand less steady.”’ 

The blue wave plunged into the railroad cut. ‘“I think,” said a 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS 569 


grey soldier, “that I hear Jubal Early yelling.”’ The blue wave 
mounted tothe level. ‘“Yaaaith! Yaaaaiith!’ came out of the dis- 
tance. “‘We know that we do,” said the men. ‘‘ Now, our friend, the 
enemy, you go back!’’ Out of the dun cloud and roar came a deep 
“Steady, men! You’ve got your bayonets yet. Stand it for five 
minutes. General Early’s coming. This is Manassas — Manassas 
— Manassas! God is over us! Stand it for five minutes — for three 
minutes. — General Early, drive them with the bayonet.” 

Late that night on the banks of Bull Run the general “from the 
West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemy” sent a 
remarkable telegram to Halleck at Washington. ‘“ We fought a terrific 
batile here yesterday with the combined forces of the enemy, which lasted 
with continuous fury from daylight until dark, by which time the enemy 
was driven from the field which we now occupy. The enemy ts still in our 
front, but badly used up. We lost not less than eight thousand men killed 
and wounded, but from the appearance of the field the enemy lost two to 
one. The news has just reached me from the front that the enemy ts re- 
treating toward the mountains.” 

The delusion holding, he, at noon of the thirtieth, ordered a gen- 
eral advance. ‘The troops to be immediately thrown forward in 
pursuit of the enemy and to press him vigorously.’”’ One of his 
officers undertook a comment. “By the Lord Harry, it will be the 
shortest pursuit that even he ever saw! Why, damn it all! they’re 
still here! I tell you the place is unlucky!”’ 

Twenty thousand blue soldiers formed the front that came down 
from the hills and moved toward the Groveton wood and the railroad 
track. Behind them were supporting masses, forty thousand strong. 
On every slope gleamed the great blue guns. The guns opened; they 
shelled with vehemence the wood, the railroad cut, and embank- 
ment, the field immediately beyond. A line of grey pickets was seen 
to leave the wood and make across the track and into cover. Pope 
at the Stone House saw these with his field glass. ‘‘The last of their 
rear guard,” he said. 

One of his generals spoke. “‘ Their guns are undoubtedly yet on 
that ridge, sir.” 

“T am perfectly well aware of that, sir. But they will not be there 
long after our line has crossed the track. Either we will gloriously 
take them, or they will limber up and scamper after Jackson. He, 


570 THE LONG ROLL 


I take it, is well on his way to Thoroughfare Gap. All that we need 
is expedition. Crush him, and then when Longstreet is up, crush 
him.” 

‘And those troops on Stuart Hill ?”’ 

‘Give you my word they are nothing, general! A rebel regiment, 
at the most a brigade, thrown out from Jackson’s right. I have posi- 
tive information. Fitz John Porter is mistaken — arrogantly mis- 
taken. — Ah, the rebel guns are going to indulge in a little bravado.” 

The twenty thousand gleaming bayonets passed the turnpike, 
passed Dogan’s house, moved on toward the wood. It rose torn and 
thin and black from yesterday’s handling. Immediately beyond was 
the railroad cut. On the other side of the railroad ran a stretch of 
field and scrub, mounting to Stony Ridge, that rose from the base of 
the woods. Stony Ridge looked grey itself and formidable, and all 
about it was the smoke of the forty grey guns. The twenty thou- 
sand bayonets pressed on. 

There came a blare of bugles. Loud and high they rang — the 
bugles of the Light Division, of Ewell’s, of Jackson’s own. They 
pierced the thunder of the guns, they came from the wood at the 
base of Stony Ridge. There was a change in the heart-beat below the 
twenty thousand bayonets. Porter and Ricketts and Hatch stared, 
and saw start from the wood a downward moving wall. It moved 
fast; it approached with a certain impetuous steadiness. Behind it 
were shorter lines, detached masses. Together all came down from 
Stony Ridge like an avalanche. The avalanche came to and took 
the field of yesterday, and stood revealed, — Stonewall Jackson hold- 
ing the railroad cut. “I thought as much,” said Fitz John Porter. 
“Go ask him to give us Reynolds.”’ 

After the third charge the 6sth and another regiment of the 
Stonewall Brigade, finding their ammunition exhausted, armed them- 
selves with stones. Those of the Thunder Run men who had not 
fallen at White Oak Swamp proved themselves expert. Broken rock 
lay in heaps by the railroad bed. They brought these into the lines, 
swung and threw them. With stones and bayonets they held the 
line. Morell and Sykes were great fighters; the grey men recognized 
worthy foes. The battle grew Titanic. Stonewall Jackson signalled 
to Lee on the Warrenton turnpike, ‘‘ Hill hard pressed. Every brigade 
engaged. Would like more guns.”’ 


THE FIELD OF MANASSAS at 


Lee sent two batteries, and Stephen D. Lee placed them. There 
arose a terrific noise, and presently a wild yelling. Lee signalled:— 

General Jackson. Do you still need reinforcements ? Lee. 

The signal officer on the knoll behind the Stonewall wigwagged 
back. 

No. The enemy are giving way. Jackson. 

They gave way, indeed. The forty guns upon the ridge, the eight 
that Lee had sent, strewed the green field beyond the Groveton 
wood with shot and shrapnel. Morell fell back, Hatch fell back; the 
guns became deadly, mowing down the blue lines. Stonewall Jack- 
son rode along the front. 

‘“‘General Hill, it is time for the counterstroke. Forward, and drive 
them!” 

The signaller wigwagged to the Warrenton turnpike: — 

General Lee. I am driving them. Jackson. 

The signaller on the turnpike signalled back: — 

General Jackson. General Longstreet is advancing. Look oui for 
and protect his left flank. Lee. 


Lee’s great battle was overand won. Every division, brigade, regi- 
ment, battery, fifty thousand infantry and cavalry brought by the 
great leader into simultaneous action, the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia moved as in a vast parade over plain and hill. Four miles in 
length, swept the first wave with, in the centre,seven grey waves 
behind it. It was late. The grey sea moved in the red and purple of 
a great sunset. From Stony Ridge the forty guns thundered like 
grey breakers, while the guns of Longstreet galloped toward the front. 
Horses and men and guns were at the martial height of passion. 
To the right Jeb Stuart appeared, magnificent. On swept the resist- 
less sea. A master mind sent it over those Manassas hills and plains, 
here diverting a portion of its waves, here curbing a too rapid on- 
slaught, here harking the great mass forward, surmounting barriers, 
overwhelming a stubborn opposition, crumbling and breaking to 
pieces. Wave on wave, rapid, continuous, unremitting, thundered 
the assault, in the red sunset of the thirtieth of August. Pope’s Army 
fought bravely, but in the dusk it melted away. 


CHATTER AL 


A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S 


AJOR JOHN PELHAM looked at the clouds boiling up above 
M Bull Run Mountains. 


“Rain, rain go away, 
Come again another day! — ” 


he said. “What’s the house they ’ve burned over there ?” 

“Chantilly, sir.” 

Ruined wall and chimney, fallen roof-tree, gaping holes where 
windows had been, the old mansion stood against the turmoil of the 
sky. It looked a desolation, a poignant gloom, an unrelieved sorrow. 
A courier appeared. ‘The enemy’s rear-guard is near Ox Hill, sir. 
They ’ve driven in some of our patrols. The main body is moving 
steady toward Fairfax Court House. General Jackson has sent the 
Light Division forward. General Stuart ’s going, too. He says, 
‘Come on.’”’ 

The clouds mounted high and dark, thunder began to mutter; by 
the time a part of the Light Division and a brigade of Ewell’s came 
into touch with Reno and Kearney, the afternoon, already advanced, 
was of the hue of twilight. Presently there set in a violent storm 
of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. The trees writhed like 
wounded soldiers, the rain came level against the face, stinging and 
blinding, the artillery of the skies out-thundered man’s inventions. 
It grew darker and darker, save for the superb, far-showing light- 
ning flashes. Beneath these the blue and the grey plunged into an 
engagement at short range. 

What with the howling of the storm, the wind that took voices and 
whirled them high and away, the thunder above and the volleying 
musketry below, to hear an order was about the most difficult feat 
imaginable. Stafford gathered, however, that Lawton, commanding 
since Ewell’s wound, was sending him to Jackson with a statement 
as to affairs on this wing. He went, riding hard against the slanting 


A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S ek 


rain, and found Jackson standing in the middle of the road, a piece 
of bronze played round by lightning. One of the brigadiers was 
speaking to him. “The cartridges are soaking wet, sir. I do not 
know that I can hold my position.”” Jackson’s voice came deep and 
curt. ‘‘ Yes, sir, you can. If your muskets won’t go off, neither will 
the enemy’s. You are to hold it, whether you can or not. Go and 
do it.” 

The brigadier went. Stafford gave his information, and received 
an order. “‘Go back along the road until you find the horse artil- 
lery. Tell Major Pelham to bring his guns to the knoll yonder with 
the blasted tree.”’ 

Stafford turned his horse and started. The rain and wind were 
now at his back — a hundred paces, and the road, lonely save for 
stragglers, the grey troops, the battle in front, was all sheeted and 
shrouded in the darkly drifting storm. The fitful bursts of musketry 
were lost beneath the artillery of the clouds. He travelled a mile, 
found Pelham and gave his order, then stood aside under the tossing 
pines while the horse artillery went by. It went by in the dusk of 
the storm, in the long howl of the wind and the dash of the rain, like 
the iron chariots of Pluto, the horses galloping, the gunners clinging 
wherever they might place hand or foot, the officers and mounted 
men spurring alongside. Stafford let them all turn a bend in the 
road, then followed. 

All this stretch of road and field and wood had been skirmished 
over, Stuart and the blue cavalry having been in touch through the 
earlier part of the day. The road was level, with the mournful 
boggy fields, with the wild bending woods. In the fields and in the 
woods there were dark objects, which might be mounds of turf or 
huge twisted roots, or which might be dead men and horses. Stafford, 
riding through wind and rain, had no sooner thought this than he 
saw, indeed, what seemed a mere hummock beneath a clump of 
cedars undoubtedly move. He looked as closely as he might for the 
war of water, air, and fire, and made out a horse outstretched and 
stark, and a man pinned beneath. The man spoke. “Hello, upon 
the road there! Come and doa Christian turn!”’ 

Stafford left his horse and, stepping through a quagmire of watery 
turf, came into the ring of cedars. The man who had called upon 
him, a tall, long-moustached person in blue, one arm and booted leg 


574 THE LONG ROLL 


painfully caught beneath the dead steed, spoke in a voice curt with 
suffering. ‘Grey, are n’t you? Don’t care. Can’t help it. Get this 
infernal weight off me, won’t you?” 

The other bent to the task, and at last managed to free the blue 
soldier. ‘“‘There! That position must have been no joke! How 
Fa) 6 edema d 

The blue cavalryman proceeded to feel bone and flesh, slowly and 
cautiously to move the imprisoned limbs. He drew a breath of 
relief. “Nothing broken! — How long? Well, to reckon by one’s 
feeling I should say about a week. Say, however, since about noon. 
We drove against a party under Stuart. He got the best of us, and 
poor Caliph got a bullet. I could see the road. Everything grey 
— grey as the sea.”’ 

“Why did n’t you call before? Any one would have helped you.” 

The other continued to rub his arm and leg. ‘‘ You have n’t got 
a drop of brandy — eh ?”’ 

“Ves, [have. Ishould have thought of that before.” He gave 
the other a small flask. The cavalryman drank. ‘Ah! in ’55, when 
I was with Walker in Nicaragua, I got pinned like that beneath a 
falling cottonwood.” He gave the flask back. ‘You are the kind of 
Samaritan I like to meet. I feel a new man. Thanks awfully.” 

“Tt was foolish of you to lie there for hours — ” 

Tre other leaned his back against a cedar. ‘‘ Well, I thought I 
might hold out, perhaps, until we beat you and I was again in the 
house of my friends. I don’t, however, object to acknowledging that 
you ’re hard to beat. Could n’t manage it. Growing cold and faint 
— head ringing. Waited as long as I could, then called. They say 
your prisons are very bad.” 

“They are no worse than yours.” 

“That may be. Any of them are bad.” 

“We are a ravaged and blockaded country. It is with some diff- 
culty that we feed and clothe our armies in the field. As for medi- 
cines with which to fight disease, you will not let them pass, not for 
our women and children and sick at home, and not for your own men 
in prison. And, for all our representations, you will not exchange 
prisoners. If there is undue suffering, I think you must share the 
blame.”’ 

“Yes, yes, it is all hellish enough! — Well, on one side of the dice, 


A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S 575 


prisoner of war; on the other, death here under poor Caliph. Might 
escape from prison, no escape from death. By Jove, what a thunder- 
clap! It ’s Stonewall Jackson pursuing us, eh?” 

“Ves. I hear Pelham’s guns — You are an Englishman?”’ 

“Yes. Francis Marchmont, at your service; colonel of the 
Marchmont”’ — he laughed — “ Invincibles.”’ 

“T am Maury Stafford, serving on General Ewell’s staff. — Yes, 
that ’s Pelham.” 

He straightened himself. “I must be getting back tothe front. It 
is hard to hear for the wind and rain and thunder, but I think the 
musketry is recommencing.” He looked about him. “We came 
through these woods this morning. Stuart has patrols everywhere, 
but I think that dip between the hills may be clear. You are pretty 
pale yet. You had better keep the brandy flask. Are you sure that 
you can walk ?”’ 

“Walk beside you into your lines, you mean?” 

“No. I mean try a way out between the hills.” 

“T am not your prisoner?”’ 

“ec No. 9? 

Marchmont pulled at his moustaches. “Yes. I think I can walk. 
I won’t deprive you of your flask — but if I might have another 
mouthful— Thank you.” He rose stiffly. “If at any time I can 
serve you, I trust that you will remember my name — Francis 
Marchmont, colonel Marchmont Invincibles. Send me a slip of 
paper, a word, anything. Ox Hill will do —and you will find me at 
your service. Yes, the firing is beginning again — ” 

Stafford, once more upon the road, travelled northward in an un- 
abated storm. Tree and bush, weed, flower and grass, writhed and. 
shrank beneath the anger of the air; the rain hissed and beat, the 
lightning glared, the thunder crashed. Between the flashes all was 
dusk. Before him the rattle of musketry, the booming of the guns 
grew louder. He saw to the right, on a bare rise of ground, Pelham’s 
guns. 

There came an attempted flanking movement of the blue —a 
dash of cavalry met by Stuart and followed by a movement of two 
of Hill’s brigades. The action barred the road and fields before Staf- 
ford. He watched it a moment, then turned aside and mounted the 
rise of ground to Pelham’s guns. A great lightning-flash lit them, 





576 THE LONG ROLL 


ranged above him. All their wet metal gleamed; about them moved 
the gunners; a man with a lifted sponge staff looked an unearthly 
figure against the fantastic castles and battlements, the peaks and 
abysses of the boiling clouds. The light vanished; Stafford came 
level with the guns in the dusk. 

Pelham welcomed him. ‘“‘Trust in God and keep your powder 
dry,’ eh, major? It’s the kind of storm you read about — Hello! 
they ’ve brought up another battery — ” 

Stafford dismounted. One of the guns had the vent so burned and 
enlarged that it was useless. It rested cold and silent beside its be!- 
lowing fellows. Stafford seated himself on the limber, and watched 
the double storm. It raged above the little hill, with its chain light- 
nings, with wind, with reverberations of thunder; and it raged below, 
between some thousands of grey and blue figures, small, small, in 
the dusk, shadowy manikins sending from metal tubes glow-worm 
flashes! He sat, with his chin in his hand, pondering the scene. 

Pelham came heavily into action. There was a blue battery on 
the opposite hill. The two spoke in whispers beneath the storm. The 
gunners, now in darkness, now in the vivid lightning, moved about 
the guns. Now they bent low, now they stood upright. The officer 
gestured to them and they to each other. Several were killed or 
wounded; and as now this section, now that, was more deeply en- 
gaged, there was some shifting among the men, occasional changes 
of place. The dusk increased; it was evident that soon night and the 
storm would put an end to the battle. Stafford, watching, made out 
that even now the blue and grey forms in the tossing woods and 
boggy meadows were showing less and less their glow-worm fires, 
were beginning to move apart. The guns above them boomed more 
slowly, with intervals between their speech. The thunder came now, 
not in ear-splitting cracks but with long rolling peals, with spaces be- 
tween filled only by the wind and the rain. The human voice might 
be heard, and the officers shouted, not gestured their orders. The 
twilight deepened. The men about the gun nearest Stafford looked 
but shadows, bending, leaning across, rising upright. They talked, 
however, and the words were now audible. “Yes, if you could 
handle lightning — take one of them zigzags and turn it loose on 
blue people! ”’— “‘ That battery is tired; it’s going home! Right tired 
myself. Reckon we’re all tired but Old Jack. He don’t never get 


A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S 577 


tired. This is a pretty behaving gun —” “ That’sso! and she’s got 
good men. They do first-rate.’’ — ‘‘ That’s so! Even the new one’s 
good”? — ‘Good! He learned that gun same as though they grew 
artillery wherever he came from. Briery Creek — No, Briony Creek 
— hey, Deaderick ?” 

“Briony Creek.” 

Stafford dropped his hand. “Who spoke?” 

The question had been breathed, not loudly uttered. No one 
answered. The gunners continued their movements about the guns, 
stooping, handling, lifting themselves upright. It was all but night, 
the lightning less and less violent, revealing little beyond mere shape 
and action. Stafford sank back. “Storm within and storm without. 
They breed delusions!” 

The blue battery opposite limbered up and went away. The mus- 
ketry fire in the hollows between the hills grew desultory. A slow 
crackle of shots would be followed by silence; then might come with 
fierce energy a sudden volley; silence followed it, too, — or what, by 
comparison, seemed silence. The thunder rolled more and more 
distantly, the wind lashed the trees, the rain beat upon the guns. 
Officers and men of the horse artillery were too tired, too wet, and 
too busy for much conversation, but still human voices came and 
went in the lessening blast, in the semi-darkness and the stream- 
ing rain. 

There was a gunner near Stafford who worked in silence and rested 
from his work in silence. Stafford became conscious of him during 
one of the latter periods —a silent man, leaning against his gun. 
He was not ten feet away, but the twilight was now deep, and he 
rested indistinct, a shadow against a shadow. Once there came a 
pale lightning flash, but his arm was raised as if to shield his eyes, 
and there was seen but a strongly made gunner with a sponge staff. 
Darkness came again at once. The impression that remained with 
Stafford was that the gunner’s face was turned toward him, that he 
had, indeed, when the flash came, been regarding him somewhat 
closely. That was nothing — a man not of the battery, a staff officer 
sitting on a disabled gun, waiting till he could make his way back to 
his chief — a moment’s curiosity on an artilleryman’s part, exhibited 
in a lull between fighting. Stafford had a certain psychic develop- 
ment. A thinker, he was adventurous in that world; to him, the true 


578 THE LONG ROLL 


world of action. The passion that had seized and bound him had 
come with the force of an invader, of a barbaric horde, from a world 
that he ordinarily ignored. It held him helpless, an enslaved spirit, 
but around it vaguely worked the old habits of mind. Now it inter- 
ested him — though only to a certain degree — that, in some subtle 
fashion and for some reason which he could not explain, the gunner 
with the sponge staff could so make himself felt across space. He 
wondered a little about this man; and then, insensibly, he began to 
review the past. He had resolution enough, and he did not always 
choose to review the past. To-night it was perhaps the atmosphere, 
the commotion of the elements, the harp of the wind, the scourging 
rain—at any rate, he reviewed it and fully. When the circle was 
completed and his attention touched again the storm and the twi- 
light hill near Chantilly, and he lifted his eyes from the soaked 
and trodden ground, it was to find the double shadow still before 
him. He felt that the eyes of the gunner with the sponge staff 
were on him, had been on him for some time. Quite involuntarily 
he moved, with a sudden gesture, as though he evaded a blow. A 
sergeant’s voice came through the twilight, the wind and the rain. 
“Deaderick!”’ 

The man by the gun moved, took up the sponge staff that had 
rested beside him, turned in the darkness and went away. 

A little later Stafford left the hilltop. The cannon had ceased 
their booming, except for here and there a fitful burst; the musketry 
fire had ceased. Pope’s rear-guard, Lee’s advance, the two drew off 
and the engagement rested indecisive. Blue and grey, a thousand or 
two men suffered death or wounding. They lay upon the miry earth, 
beneath the pelting storm. Among the blue, Kearney and Stevens 
were killed. Through the darkness that wrapped the scene, Stafford 
found at last bis way to his general. He found him with Stuart, who 
was reporting to Stonewall Jackson. “‘They’re retreating pretty 
rapidly, sir. They’ll reach Fairfax Court House presently.” 

“Yes. They won’t stop there. We’ll bivouac on the field, gen- 
eral 

‘““And to-morrow, sir?” 

“To-morrow, sir, we will follow them out of Virginia.”’ 

September the second dawned bright and clear. From Fairfax 
Court House Pope telegraphed to Halleck. ‘There is undoubted pur- 


A GUNNER OF PELHAM’S 579 


pose on the part of the enemy to keep on slowly turning my position 
so as to come in on the right. The forces under my command are 
unable to prevent his doing so. Telegraph what to do.” 

Halleck telegraphed to fall back to the fortifications of Alexandria 
and Washington. 


OB is Vee ed By aie, G By 


THE TOLLGATE 


ning to show in the maple leaves, while the gum trees dwell- 

ing in the hollows had a deeper tinge of crimson. But the 
mass of the forest was yet green. The September sun was like balm, 
amber days, at once alert and dreamlike. The September nights were 
chilly. But the war, that pinched and starved and took away on all 
hands, left the forest and the wood for fires. On Thunder Run the 
women cut the wood, and the children gathered dead boughs and 
pine cones. 

The road over the mountain was in a bad condition. It had not 
been worked for a year. That mattered the less perhaps, that it was 
now so little travelled. All day and every day Tom Cole sat in the 
sunshine on the toll gate porch, the box for the toll beside him, and 
listened for wheels or horses’ hoofs. It was an event now when he 
could hobble out to the gate, take the toll and pass the time of day, 
He grew querulous over the state of the road. “There’d surely be 
more travel if ’t warn’t so bad! Oh, yes, I know there aren’t many 
left hereabouts to travel, and what there are, have n’t got the 
means. But there surely would be more going over the mountain if. 
the road wan’t so bad!” He had a touch of fever, and he babbled 
about the road all night, and how hard it was not to see or talk to any- 
body! He said that he wished that he had died when he fell out of 
Nofsinger’s hayloft. The first day that he was well enough to be 
left, Sairy went round to the Thunder Run women, beginning with 
Christianna Maydew’s mother. Several days afterward, Tom hob- 
bling out on the porch was most happily welcomed by the noise of 
wheels. “Thar now!” said Sairy, “‘ain’t it a real picnic feeling to 
get back to business?”? Tom went out to the gate with the tobacco 
box. A road wagon, and a sulky and a man on horseback! The 
old man’s eyes glistened. “‘ Mornin’, gentlemen!” “ Mornin’, Mr. 
Cole! County’s mended your road fine! Big hole down there filled 


CO: Thunder Run Mountain faint reds and yellows were begin- 


THE TOLLGATE 581 


up and the bridge that was just a mantrap new floored! The news? 
Well, Stonewall Jackson’s after them!” 

But despite the filled-up holes travel was slight, slight! To-day 
from dawn until eleven, no one had passed. Tom sat in the sun on 
the porch, and the big yellow cat slept beside him, and the china 
asters bloomed in the tiny yard. Sairy was drying apples. She had 
them spread on boards in the sun. Now and then she came from the 
kitchen to look at them, and with a peach bough to drive the bees 
away. The close of summer found, as ever, Thunder Run shrunken 
to something like old age; but even so his murmur was always there 
like a wind in the trees. This morning there was a fleet of clouds in 
the September sky. Their shadows drove across the great landscape, 
the ridges and levels of the earth, out upon which Thunder Run 
Mountain looked so steadily. 

A woman, a neighbour living a mile beyond the schoolhouse, came 
by. Sairy went over to the little picket fence and the two talked. 
“‘How is she?” — “She’s dead.” — ‘“‘Sho! You don’t say so! Poor 
thing, poor thing! I reckon I thought of her mor’n I slept last night. 
—7 Nahe coudr 

“Born dead.” 

Sairy struck her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Sho! 
War killin’ ’em even thar!” 

The mountain woman spoke on in the slow mountain voice. “She 
had awful dreams. Somebody was fool enough to tell her ’bout how 
dreadful thirsty wounded folk get, lyin’ thar all round the clock an’ 
no one comin’! An’ some other fool read her out of an old newspaper 
‘bout Malvern Hill down thar at Richmond. Mrs. Cole, she thought 
she was a soldier. An’ when she begun to suffer she thought she was 
wounded. She thought she was all mangled and torn by a cannon 
ball. Yes’m, it was pitiful. An’ she said thar was a high hill. It was 
five miles high, she said. An’ she said thar was water at the top, 
which was foolish, but she could n’t help that, an’ God knows wo- 
men go through enough to make them foolish! An’ she said thar was 
jest one path, an’ thar was two children playing on it, an’ she 
could n’t make them understand. She begged us all night to tell the 
children thar was a wounded soldier wantin’ to get by. An’ at dawn 
she said the water was cold an’ died.” 

The woman went on up Thunder Run Mountain. Sairy turned 


582 THE LONG ROLL 


again the drying apples, then brought her patching out upon the 
porch and sat down in a low split-bottomed chair opposite Tom. 
The yellow cat at her feet yawned, stretched, and went back to 
sleep. The china asters bloomed; the sun drew out the odours of 
thyme and rue and tansy. Tom read a last week’s newspaper. Gen- 
eral Lee crosses the Potomac. 

Christianna came down the road and unlatched the gate. ‘‘Come 
in, come in, Christianna!”’ said Tom. ‘Come in and take a cheer! 
Letter came yesterday —”’ 

Christianna sat down on the edge of the porch, her back against 
the pillar. She took off her sunbonnet. “Violetta learned to do a 
heap of things while I was down t’ Richmond. I took a heap of them 
back, too, but somehow I’ve got more time than I used to have. 
Somehow I jest wander round —’”’ 

Tom took a tin box from beside the tobacco box. “”I would be 
awful if the letter didn’t come once’t every ten days or two weeks! 
Reckon I’d go plumb crazy, an’ so would Sairy — 

Sairy turned the garment she was patching. “Sho! I neuld n’t 
go crazy. What’s the use when it’s happening all the time? I ain’t 
denying that most of the light would go out of things. Stop ima- 
ginin’ an’ read Christianna what he says about furin’ parts.” 

“After Gaines’s Mill it was twelve days,” said Tom, “an’ the 
twelfth day we did n’t say a word, only Sairy read the Bible. An’ 
now he’s well and rejoined at Leesburg.”’ 

He cleared his throat. ‘‘ DEAR AUNT SAIRY AND Tom: — It’s fine to 
get back to the Army! It’s an Army that you can love. I do love it. 
But I love Thunder Run and the School House and Tom and Sairy 
Cole, too, and sometimes I miss them dreadfully! I rejoined at Lees- 
burg. The 65th —I can’t speak of the 65th — you know why. It 
breaks my heart. But it’s reorganized. The boys were glad to see 
me, and I was glad to see them. Tell Christianna that Billy’s all 
right. He’s sergeant now, and he does fine. And Dave’s all right, 
too, and the rest of the Thunder Run men. The War’s done a heap 
for Mathew Coffin. It’s made a real man of him. Tom, I wish you 
could have seen us fording the Potomac. It was like a picture book. 
All a pretty silver morning, with grey plovers wheeling overhead, 
and the Maryland shore green and sweet, and the water cool to your 
waist, and the men laughing and calling and singing ‘ Maryland, my 


THE TOLLGATE 583 


Maryland!’ Fitzhugh Lee was ahead with the cavalry. It was pretty 
tosee the horses go over, and the blessed guns that we know and love, 
every iron man of them, and all the white covered wagons. Our divi- 
sion crossed last, Old Jack at the head. When we came up from the 
river into Maryland we turned toward Frederick. The country’s 
much like our own and the people pleasant enough. You know we’ve 
got the Maryland Line, and a number besides. They’re fine men, a 
little dashing, but mighty steady, too. They’ve expressed them- 
selves straight along as positively certain that all Maryland would 
rise and join us. There’s a line of the song, you know: — 
“ Huzzah! huzzah! 
She breathes, she burns, she’ll come, she’ll come, 
Maryland! my Maryland!” 

“She has n’t come yet. The people evidently don’t dislike us, and 
as a matter of course we are n’t giving them any reason to. But their 
farms are all nice and green and well tilled, and we have n’t seen a 
burned house or mill, and the children are going to school, and the 
stock is all sleek and well fed — and if they have n’t seen they’ve 
heard of the desolation on our side of the river. They’ve got a pretty 
good idea of what War is and they’re where more people would be 
if they had that idea beforehand. They are willing to keep out of it. 
— So they’re respectful, and friendly, and they crowd around to try 
to get a glimpse of General Lee and General Jackson, but they don’t 
volunteer — not in shoals as the Marylanders said they would! The 
Maryland Line looks disdain at them. Mathew Coffin is dread- 
fully fretted about the way we’re dressed. He says that’s the reason 
Maryland won’t come. But the mess laughs at him. It says that if 
Virginia does n’t mind, Maryland need n’t. I wish you could see us, 
Aunt Sairy. When I think of how I went away from you and Tom 
with that trunk full of lovely clean things! — Now we are gaunt and 
ragged and shoeless and dirty —’’ Tom stopped to wipe his spec- 
tacles. 

Sairy threaded a needle. ‘All that’s less lasting than some other 
things, they air. I reckon they’ll leave a brighter streak than a deal 
of folk who are n’t gaunt an’ ragged an’ shoeless an’ dirty.” 

“T don’t ever see them so,”’ said Christianna, in her soft drawling 
voice. “I see them just like a piece we had in a book of reading 
pieces at school. It was a hard piece but, I learned it. 


584 THE LONG ROLL 


* All furnished, all in arms, 
All plumed like estridges that with the wind 
Bated — like eagles having lightly bathed, 
Glittering in golden coats like images.” 


“No. I reckon if Virginia don’t mind, Maryland need n’t.”’ 

Tom began again. “‘ We’ve got a lovely camp here, and it’s good 
to lie and rest on the green grass. The Army has had hard fighting 
and hard marching. Second Manassas was a big battle. It’s in the 
air that we’ll have another soon. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll 
come out all right. And if I don’t, never forget that you did every- 
thing in the world for me and that I loved you and thought of you 
at the very last. Is living getting hard on Thunder Run? I fear so 
sometimes, for it’s getting hard everywhere, and you can’t see the 
end — I wish I had some pay to send you, but we are n’t getting any 
now. This war’s going to be fought without food or pay. Tell me, 
Aunt Sairy, just right honestly how you are getting on. It’s getting 
toward winter. When I say my prayers I pray now that it won’t be 
a hard winter. A lot of us are praying that. It’s right pitiful, the 
men with wives and children at home, and the country growing to 
look like a desert. — But that’s gloomy talk, and if there’s one thing 
more than another we’ve got to avoid it’s being gloomy! — Tell me 
everything when you write. Write to Winchester — that’s our base 
of supplies and rendezvous now. Tell me about everybody on Thun- 
der Run, but most of all tell me about yourselves. Give my very 
best regards to Christianna. She surely was good to me in Rich- 
mond. I don’t know what I would have done without her. At first, 
belore- | 

Sairy put out her hand. ‘Give it to me, Tom. I’ll read the rest. 
You re-red.. 

“No, I’m not,” said Tom. — “At first, before I came up with the 
Army, I missed her dreadfully.” 

Sairy rose, stepped from the porch, and turned the drying apples. 
Coming back, she touched the girl on the shoulder — very gently. 
“They’re all fools, Christianna. Once I met a woman who did not 
know her thimble finger. I thought that beat all! But it’s hard to 
match the men.” 

“You’ve put me out!’’said Tom. ‘Where was I? Oh — At first, 
before I came up with the Army, I missed her dreadfully. Billy 


THE TOLLGATE 585 


reminds me of her at times. — It’s near roll call,and I must stop. 
God bless you both. Allan.”’ 

Tom folded the letter with trembling hands, laid it carefully 
atop of the others in the tin box, and took off and wiped his 
glasses. “Yes, if a letter didn’t come every two weeks I’d go 
plumb crazy! I’ve got to hear him say ‘dear Tom’ that often, 
anyhow —”’ 

Christianna rose, pulling her sunbonnet over her eyes. “Thank 
you, Mrs. Cole an’ Mr. Cole. I thought I’d like to hear. Now I'll 
be going back up the mountain. Violetta an’ Rosalinda are pulling 
fodder and mother is ploughing for wheat. I do the spinning 
mostly. You’ve got lovely china asters, Mrs. Cole. They have a 
flower they called magnolia down ’t Richmond — like a great sweet 
white cup, an’ they had pink crapemyrtles. I liked it in Richmond, 
for all the death an’ mourning. Thunder Run’s so far away. Good 
mahnin’, Mrs. Cole. Good mahnin’, Mr. Cole.” 

The slight homespun figure disappeared around the bend of the 
road. Sairy sewed in silence. Tom went back tothenewspaper. The 
ycilow cat slept on, the bees buzzed and droned, the sweet mountain 
air brushed through the trees, a robin sang. Half an hour passed. 
Tom raised his head. “I hear some one coming!’’ He reached for the 
tobacco box. 

It proved to be an old well-loved country doctor, on a white horse, 
with his saddle bags before him. Sairy hurried out, too, to the gate. 
“Doctor, I want to ask you something about Tom — ” “Psha, 
I’m all right,” said Tom. ‘‘Won’t you get down and set a little, 
doctor?” 

The doctor would and did, and after he had prescribed for the 
toll-gate keeper a two hours’ nap every day and not to get too excited 
over war news, Tom read him Allan’s letter, and they got intoa 
hot discussion of the next battle. Sairy turned the drying apples, 
brushed away the bees, and brought fresh water from the well, then 
sat down again with her mending. “Doctor, how’s the girl at Three 
Oaks?” 

The doctor came back from Maryland to his own county and to 
the fold which he tended without sleep, without rest, and with little 
pay save in loving hearts. “‘ Miriam Cleave? She’s better, Mrs. 
Cole, she’s better!” 


586 - THE LONG ROLL 


“T’m mighty glad to hear it,” said Sairy. “’T ain’t a decline, 
then?” 

“No, no! Just shock on shock coming to a delicate child. Her 
mother will bring her through. And there’s a great woman.” 

“That ’s so, that’s so!” assented Tom cordially. “A great 
woman.” 

Sairy nodded, drawing her thread across a bit of beeswax. ‘For 
once you are both right. He is n’t there now, doctor?” 

“No. He was n’t there but a week or two.”’ 

Py OWeen © -=31- 

“No, Tom. I don’t know where he has gone. They have some 
land in the far south, down somewhere on the Gulf. He may have 
gone there.” 

“T reckon,” said Tom, “he could n’t stand it in Virginia. All the 
earth beginnin’ to tremble under marchin’ feet and everybody askin’, 
‘Where ’s the army to-day?’ I reckon he could n’t stand it. I 
could n’t. Allan don’t believe he did it, an’ I don’t believe it 
either.” 7 

“Nor I,” said Sairy. 

“He came up here,” said Tom, “just as quiet an’ grave an’ simple 
as you or me. An’ he sat there in his lawyer’s clothes, with his back 
to that thar pillar, an’ he told Sairy an’ me all about Allan. He told 
us how good he was an’ how all the men loved him an’ how valuable 
he was to the service. An’ he said that the wound he got at Gaines’s 
Mill was n’t so bad after all as it might have been, and that Allan 
would soon be rejoining. An’ he said that being a scout wasn’t as 
glorious, maybe, but it was just as necessary as being a general. An’ 
that he had always loved Allan an’ always would. An’ he told us 
about something Allan did at McDowell and then again at Kerns- 
town — an’ Sairy cried an’ so did I — ” 

Sairy folded her work. ‘‘I was n’t crying so much for Allan — ’ 

‘An’ then he asked for a drink of water ’n we talked a little about 
the crops, ’n he went down the mountain. An’ Sairy an’ I don’t 
believe he did it.” 

The doctor drew his hand downward over mouth and white beard. 
“Well, Mrs. Cole, I don’t either. The decisions of courts and judges 
don’t always decide. There ’s always a chance of an important 
witness called Truth having been absent. I didn’t see Richard 


bi 


THE TOLLGATE 587 


Cleave but once while he was at Three Oaks. He looked and acted 
then just like Richard Cleave, — only older and graver. It was 
beautiful to see him and his mother together.”’ The doctor rose. 
“But I reckon it’s as Tom says and he could n’t stand it, and has 
gone where he does n’t hear ‘the army — the army — the army’ 
—all day long. Mrs. Cleave has n’t said anything, and I would n’t 
ask. The last time I saw her — and I think he had just gone — she" 
looked like a woman a great artist might have met in a dream.” 

The doctor gazed out over the autumn sea of mountains and up 
at the pure serene of the heavens, and then at his old, patient white 
horse with the saddle bags across the saddle. “ Mrs. Cole, all you’ve 
got to dois to keep Tom from getting excited. I ’ll be back this way 
the first of the week and I’ll stop again — ” 

Tom cleared his throat. “I don’t know when Sairy an’ me can 
pay you, doctor. I never realized till it came how war stops business. 
I’d about as well be keeping toll gate in the desert of Sahary.” 

“T’m not doing it for pay,” said the doctor. “It’s just the place 
to stop and rest and talk, and as for giving you a bit of opinion and 
advice, Lord! I’m not so poor that I can’t do that. If you want to 
give me something in return I certainly could use three pounds of 
dried apples.” 

The doctor rode on down the mountain. Tom and Sairy had a 
frugal dinner. Then the former lay down to take the prescribed nap, 
and the latter set her washtub on a box in the yard beneath the peach 
trees. Tom didn’t sleep long; he said every time he was about to drop 
off he thought he heard wheels. He came back to his split-bottomed 
chair on the porch, the tobacco box for the toll, the tin box with 
Allan’s letters, and the view across the china asters of the road. The 
afternoon was past its height, but bright yet, with the undersong of 
the wind and of Thunder Run. The yellow cat had had his dinner, 
too, and after sauntering around the yard, and observing the robin 
on the locust tree again curled himself on the porch and slept. 

Sairy straightened herself from the washtub. ‘“Somebody’s 
comin’ up the road. It’sa man!’ She came toward the porch, wip- 
ing her hands, white and crinkled, upon her apron. “He’s a soldier, 
Tom! Maybe one of the boys air come back — 

Tom rose too, quickly. He staggered and had to catch at the sap- 
ling that made the pillar. ‘Maybe it’s —” 


588 THE LONG ROLL 


“No, no! no, no! Don’t you think that, an’ have a setback when 
you find it ain’t! It ain’t tall enough for Allan, an’ it ain’t him any- 
how. It could n’t be.” | 

“No, I reckon it could n’t,” said Tom. “But anyhow it’s one of 
the boys.” He was half way to the gate, Sairy after him, and they 
were the first to welcome Steve Dagg back to Thunder Run. 

Tom Cole forgot that he had no opinion of Steve anyway. Sairy 
oursed her lips, but a soldier was a soldier. Steve came and sat down 
en the edge of the porch, beside the china asters. ‘“‘Gawd! don’t 
Thunder Run sound natural! Yass ’m, I walked from Buford’s, 
an’ ’t was awful hard to do, cause my foot is all sore an’ gangrened. 
I’ve got a furlough till it gets well. It’s awful sore. Gawd! ef Thun- 
der Run had seen what I’ve seen, an’ heard what I’ve heard, an’ 
done what I’ve done, an’ been through what I’ve been through —” 


CHAPTER XE 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. IQI 


council of war, — Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet, Jeb Stu- 

art. Lee sat beside the table, Jackson faced him, sabre across 
knees, Longstreet had his place a little to one side, and Stuart stood, 
his shoulder against the tent pole. The last-named had been speak- 
ing. He now ended with “I think I may say, sir, that hardly a 
rabbit has gotten past my pickets. He’s a fine fellow, Little Mac is! 
but he’s mighty cautious, and you could n’t exactly call him swift as 
lightning. He’s still a score of miles to the east of us, and he knows 
mighty little what we are about.” 

Jackson spoke. ‘General McClellan does not know if the whole 
army has crossed or only part of it has crossed. He does not know 
whether we are going to move against Washington, or move 
against Baltimore, or invade Pennsylvania. Always mystify, mis- 
lead, and deceive the enemy as far as possible.” 

Longstreet spoke. “Well, by the time he makes those twenty 
miles the troops should be rested and in condition. We’ll have an- 
other battle and another victory.” 

Lee spoke, addressing Stuart. “You have done your work most 
skilfully, general. It is not every army that has a Jeb Stuart!” He 
paused, then spoke to all. “McClellan will not be up for several 
days. Across the river, in Virginia, are yet fourteen thousand of the 
enemy. I had hoped that, scattered as they are, Washington would 
withdraw them when it heard of our crossing. It has not done so, 
however. It is not well to have in our rear that entrenched camp at 
Harper’s Ferry. It is my idea, gentlemen, that it might be possible 
to repeat the manceuvre of Second Manassas.” 

Stonewall Jackson hitched his chair closer. Stuart chuckled joy- 
ously. Longstreet looked dubious. “Do you mean, general, that 
you would again divide the army?” 

Lee rested his crossed hands on the table before him. ‘Gentle- 


I: Lee’s tent, pitched in a grove a mile from Frederick, was held a 


590 THE LONG ROLL 


men, did I have the Northern generals’ numbers, I, too, might be 
cautious. Having only Robert E. Lee’s numbers, I advance another 
policy. It is my idea again to divide the army.” 

“In the enemy’s country? We have not fifty-five thousand fight- 
ing strength.” 

“Yes, in the enemy’s country. And I know that we have not 
fifty-five thousand fighting strength. My plan is this, gentlemen. 
General Stuart has proved his ability to hold all roads and mask all 
movements. We will form two columns, and behind the screen 
which his cavalry provides, one column will move north and one col- 
umn will move south. By advancing toward Hagerstown the first 
will create the impression that Pennsylvania is to be invaded. More- 
over Catoctin and South Mountain are strong defensive positions. 
The other column will move with expedition. Recrossing the Poto- 
mac, it will invest and capture Harper’s Ferry. That done, it will 
return at once into Maryland, rejoining me before McClellan is up.” 

Longstreet swore. ‘‘By God, that is a bold plan! — What if Mc- 
Clellan should learn it?” 

“As against that, we must trust in General Stuart. These 
people must be driven out of Harper’s Ferry. All our communica- 
tions are threatened.” 

Longstreet was blunt. ‘Well, sir, I think it is madness. Pray 
don’t send me on any such errand!” 

Lee smiled. ‘‘General Jackson, what is your opinion?” 

Jackson spoke with brevity. ‘I might prefer, sir, to attack Mc- 
Clellan first and then turn upon Harper’s Ferry. But I see no mad- 
ness in the other plan — if the movement is rapid. Sometimes to be 
bold is the sanest thing you can do. It isnecessary of course that the 
enemy should be kept in darkness.” 

“Then, general, you will undertake the reduction of Harper’s 
Perry. 

“Tf you order me to do it, sir, I will do it.” 

“Very good. You will start at dawn. Besides your own you shall, 
have McLaws’s and Anderson’s divisions. The remainder of the 
army will leave Frederick an hour or two later. Colonel Chilton 
will at once issue the order of march.”” He drew a piece of paper 
toward him and with a pencil made a memorandum — SPECIAL Or- 
DERS, No. rot. 


Low a ee a a oe 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 sgl 


The remainder of the ninth of September passed. The tenth of 
September passed, and the eleventh, mild, balmy and extremely 
still. The twelfth found the landscape for miles around Frederick 
still dozing. At noon, however, upon this day things changed. Mc- 
Clellan’s strong cavalry advance came into touch with Jeb Stuart a 
league or two to the east. There ensued a skirmish approaching in 
dignity to an engagement. Finally the grey drew off, though not, to 
the Federal surprise, in the direction of Frederick. Instead they 
galloped north. 

The blue advance trotted on, sabre to hand, ready for the dash 
into Frederick. Pierced at last was the grey, movable screen! Now 
with the infantry close behind, with the magnificent artillery rum- 
bling up, with McClellan grim from the Seven Days — now for the 
impact which should wipe out the memory of the defeat of a fortnight 
ago, of the second Bull Run, an impact that should grind rebellion 
small! They came to Frederick and found a quiet shell. There was 
no one there to sabre. 

Information abounded. McClellan, riding in with his staff toward 
evening, found himself in a sandstorm of news, through which no- 
thing could be distinctly observed. Prominent citizens were brought 
before him. “Yes, general; they undoubtedly went north. Yes, 
sir, the morning of the tenth. Two columns, but starting one just 
after the other and on the same road. Yes, sir, some of our younger 
men did follow on horseback after an hour or two. They could just 
see the columns still moving north. Then they ran against Stuart’s 
cordon and they had to turn back. Frederick’s been just like a 
desert island — nobody coming and nobody getting away. For all 
he’s as frisky as a puppy, Jeb Stuart’s a mighty good watch dog!” 

McClellan laughed. ‘“‘Beauty’ Stuart!—I wish I had him 
here.” He grew grave again. “I am obliged to you, sir. Who’s 
this, Ames?”’ 

“Tt is a priest, sir, that ’s much looked up to. He says he has a col- 
lection of maps — Father Tierney, will you speak to the general?” 

“Faith, and that I will, my son!” said Father Tierney. ‘Good 
avenin’, general, and the best of fortunes!”’ 

“Good evening, Father. What has your collection to do with it?” 

“Faith,” said Father Tierney, “and that’s for you to judge, gen- 
eral. It was the avenin’ of the eighth, and I was sittin’ in my 


592 THE LONG ROLL 


parlour after Judy O’Flaherty’s funeral, and having just parted 
with Father Lavalle at the Noviciate. And there came a rap, and 
an aide of Stonewall Jackson’s — But whisht! maybe I am taking 
up your time, general, with things you already know?” 

‘“‘Go on, go on! ‘An aide of Stonewall Jackson’s —’”’ 

““Holy powers!’ thinks I, ‘no rest even afther a funeral!’ but 
‘Come in, come in, my son!’ I said, and in he comes. ‘My name is 
Jarrow, Father,’ says he, ‘and General Jackson has heard that you 
have a foine collection at maps.’ 

““And that’s thrue enough,’ says I, ‘and what then, my son?’ 
Whereupon he lays down his sword and cap and says, ‘ May I look 
ac thimr’’’ 

Father Tierney coughed. “There’s a number of gentlemen wait- 
ing in the entrry. Maybe, general, you’d be afther learning of the 
movement of the ribils with more accuracy from thim. And I could 
finish about the maps another time. You are n’t under any obliga- 
tion to be listenin’ to me.” : 

“Shut the door, Ames,” said the general. ‘Now Father. — 
‘May I look at them,’ he said.” E 

“““Why, av course,’ said I, ‘far be it from Benedict Tierney to 
put a lock on knowledge!’ and I got thim down. ‘There’s one that 
was made for Leonard Calvert in 1643’ — says I, ‘and there’s an- 
other showing St. Mary’s about the time of the Indian massacre, and 
there ’s a very rare one of the Chesapeake —’ 

“Extremely interestin’,’ he says, ‘but for General Jackson’s pur- 
poses 1862 will answer. You have recent maps also?’ 

“*Yes, I have,’ I said, and I got thim down, rather disappointed, 
having thought him interested in Colonial Maryland and maybe in 
the location of missions. ‘What do you wish?’ said I, still polite, 
though I had lost interest. ‘A map of Pennsylvania,’ said he —” 

“A map of Pennsylvania! — Ames, get your notebook there.” 

“And I unrolled it and he looked at it hard. ‘Good road to 
Waynesboro?’ he said, and says I, ‘Fair, my son, fair!’ And says 
he, ‘I may take this map to General Jackson?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but I 
hope you Il soon beso good as to returnit.’ ‘I will,’ said he. ‘ Bedad,’ 
said I, “you ribils are right good at returning things! I’ll say that 
for you!? said I — and he rolled up the map and put it under his 
arin 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 593 


The general drew along breath. “Pennsylvania invaded by way 
of Waynesboro. I am much obliged, Father —” 

“Wait, wait, my son, I’m not done, yet! And thin, says he, 
‘General Jackson wants a map of the country due east from here, 
one,’ says he, ‘that shows the roads to Baltimore.’” 

“ Baltimore! —” 

“Have you got that one ?’ says he. ‘ Yis,’ says I, and unrolled it, 
and he looked at it carefully and long. ‘I see,’ says he, ‘that by 
going north from Frederick to Double Pipe Creek you would strike 
there the turnpike running east. Thank you, Father! May I take 
this one, too?’ And he rolled it up and put it under his arm —” 

“Baltimore,” said McClellan, ‘‘ Baltimore —”’ 

_ “*And now, Father,’ says he, “have you one of the region between 
here and Washington?’ . . . Don’t be afther apologizing, general! 
There are times when I want a strong word meself. So I got that 
map, too, and he looked at it steadily. ‘I understand,’ says he, 
‘that going west by north you would strike a road that leads you 
south again?’ — ‘And that’s thrue,’ said I. And he looked at the 
map long and steadily again, and he asked what was the precise 
distance from Point of Rocks to Washington —” 

“Point of Rocks! Good Lord! Ames, get ready to take these 
telegrams —”’ 

“ And thin he said, ‘ May I have this, too, Father?’ and he rolled it 
up, and said General Jackson would certainly be obliged and would 
return thim in good order. (Which he did.) And thin he took up 
his cap and sword and said good avenin’ and went. That’s all that 
I know of the matter, general, saving and excepting that the ribil 
columns certainly started next morning with their faces toward 
the great State of Pennsylvania. Don’t mention it, general! — 
though if you are interested in good works, and I’m not doubting 
the same, there’s an orphan asylum here —” 

Having arrived at a crossroads without a signpost McClellan 
characteristically hesitated. The activity of the next twelve hours 
was principally electrical and travelled by wire from Frederick to 
Washington and Washington to Frederick. The cavalry, indeed was 
pushed forward toward Boonsboro, but for the remainder of the 
army, as it came up, corps by corps, the night passed in inaction, 
and morning dawned on inaction. March north toward Pennsy]- 


594 THE LONG ROLL 


vania, and leave Washington to be bombarded! — turn south and 
east toward Washington and hear a cry of protest and anger from 
an invaded state! — turn due east to Baltimore and be awakened by 
the enemy’s cannon thundering against the other sides of the figure! 
—leave Baltimore out of the calculation and lose, perhaps, the 
whole of Maryland! McClellan was disturbed enough. And then, in 
the great drama of real life there occurred an incident. 

An aide appeared in the doorway of the room in which were 
gathered McClellan and several of his generals. The.discussion had 
been a heated one; all the men looked haggard, disturbed. “‘ What is 
it?” asked McClellan sharply. 

The aide held something in his hand. “This has just been found, 
sir. It seems to have been dropped at a street corner. Leaves and 
rubbish had been blown over it. The soldier who found it brought 
it here. He thought it important — and I think it is, sir.”’ 

He crossed the floor and gave it to the general. ‘‘Three cigars 
wrapped in a piece of paper! Why, what — A piece of paper 
wrapped around three cigars.’ Open the shutters more widely, 
Ames!” 


HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, 
Sepiember 9, 1862. 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. IQI 


The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagers- 
town road. General Jackson’s command will form the advance, and 
after passing Middletown with such portion as he may select, take 
the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most con- 
venient point, and by Friday morning take possession of the Balti- 
more and Ohio Railroad, capture such of the enemy as may be at 
Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from 
Harper’s Ferry. 

General Longstreet’s command will pursue the main road as far 
as Boonsborough, where it will halt with reserve, supply, and bag- 
gage trains of the army. 

General McLaws, with his own division and that of General R. H. 
Anderson, will follow General Longstreet. On reaching Middle- 
town he will take the route to Harper’s Ferry, and by Friday morn- 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 595 


ing possess himself of the Maryland Heights and cap een to cap- 
ture the enemy at Harper’s Ferry and vicinity. 

General Walker with his division, after accomplishing the object 
in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek’s Ford, 
ascend its right bank to Lovettesville, take possession of Loudoun 
Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning, Key’s Ford on his left, 
and the road between the end of the mountain and the Potomac on 
his right. He will as far as possible codperate with generals McLaws 
and Jackson and intercept the retreat of the enemy. 

General D. H. Hill’s division will form the rear-guard of the 
Army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve 
artillery, ordnance and supply trains, etc., will precede General 
Hill. 

General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany 
the commands of generals Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws, and, 
with the main body of the cavalry, will cover the route of the army, 
bringing up all stragglers that may have been left behind. 

The commands of Generals Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after 
accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will 
join the main body of the army at Boonsboro or Hagerstown. 

By command of General R. E. Lee, 
R. H. Curtron, 
Assistant Adjutant-General. 


In the room at Frederick there was a silence that might have been 
felt. At last McClellan rose, and stepping softly to the window, 
leaned his hands upon the sill, and looked out at the bright blue sky. 
He turned presently. ‘‘Gentlemen, the longer I live, the more 
firmly I believe that old saying, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction!’ — 
By the Hagerstown Road — General Hooker, General Reno —”’ 

On the morning of the tenth Stonewall Jackson, leaving Fred-- 
erick, marched west by the Boonsboro Road. Ahead, Stuart’s. 
squadrons stopped all traffic. The peaceful Maryland villages were. 
entered without warning and quitted before the inhabitants recov- 
ered from their surprise. Cavalry in the rear swept together all 
stragglers. The detachment, twenty-five thousand men, almost half 
of Lee’s army, drove, a swift, clean-cut body, between the autumn 
fields and woods that were beginning to turn. In the fields were. 


596 THE LONG ROLL 


farmers ploughing, in the orchards gathering apples. They stopped 
and stared. ‘‘ Well, ain’t that a sight? — And half of them barefoot! 
—and their clothes fit for nothing but scarecrows. Well, they ain’t 
robbers. No — and their guns are mighty bright!’ 

South Mountain was crossed at Turner’s Gap. It was near sunset 

when the bugles rang halt. Brigade by brigade Stonewall Jackson’s 
command left the road, stacked arms, broke ranks in fair, rolling 
autumn fields and woods. A mile or two ahead was the village of 
Boonsboro. Jackson sent forward to make enquiries Major Kyd 
Douglas of his staff. That officer took a cavalryman with him and 
trotted off. 
_ The little place looked like a Sweet Auburn of the vale, so tran- 
quilly innocent did it lie beneath the rosy west. The two officers 
commented upon it, and the next moment ran into a Federal cavalry 
company sent to Sweet Auburn from Hancock for forage or recruits 
or some such matter. The blue troopers set up a huzzah, and 
charged. The two in grey turned and dug spur, — past ran the 
fields, past ran the woods! The thundering pursuit fired its revolv- 
ers; the grey turned in saddle and emptied theirs, then bent head 
to horse’s neck and plied the spur. Before them the road mounted. 
“Pass the hill and we are safe! — Pass the hill and we are safe!” 
thought the grey, and the spur drew blood. Behind came the blue 
—a dozen troopers. ‘Stop there, you damned rebels, stop there! 
If you don’t, when we catch you we’ll cut you to pieces!’’ Almost 
at the hilltop one of the grey uttered a cry. “Good God! the 
general!” 

Stonewall Jackson was coming toward them. He was walking ap- 
parently in deep thought, and leading Little Sorrel. He was quite 
alone. The two officers shouted. They saw him look up, take in the 
situation, and put his hand on the saddle bow. Then, to give him 
time, the two turned. “Yaaiih! Yaaaaiiahh!”’ they yelled, and 
charged the enemy. 

The blue, taken by surprise, misinterpreted the first shout and 
the ensuing action. There must, of course, be coming over the hill a 
grey force detached on some reconnoissance or other from the rebel 
horde known to be reposing at Frederick. Presumably it would be 
cavalry — and coming at a gallop! To stop to cut down these two 
yelling grey devils might be to invite destruction. The blue troopers 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 597 


first emptied their revolvers, then wheeled horse, and retired to 
Sweet Auburn, out of which a little later the grey cavalry did indeed 
drive them. 

In the last of the rosy light the two officers, now again at the hill- 
top, saw the camp outspread below it and coming at a double quick 
the regiment which Jackson had sent to the rescue. One checked 
his horse. ‘‘What’s that?” asked the other. 

“The general’s gloves. He dropped them when he mounted.” 

He stooped from his horse and gathered them up. Later, back in 
camp, he went to headquarters. Jackson was talking ammunition 
with his chief of ordnance, an aide of A. P. Hill’s standing near, 
waiting his turn. “Well, Major Douglas?”’ 

“Your gloves, general. You dropped them on the hilltop.” 

“Good! put them there, major, if you please. — Colonel Crutch- 
field, the ordnance train will cross first. As the batteries come up 
from the river see that every caisson is filled. That is all. Now, 
Captain Scarborough —”’ 

“General Hill very earnestly asks, sir, that he may be permitted 
to speak to you.” 

“Where is General Hill? Is he here?” 

“Yes, sir, he is outside the tent.” 

“Tell him to comein. You have a very good fast horse, Major 
Douglas. There is nothing more, I think, to-night. Good-night.” 

A. P. Hill entered alone, without his sword. ‘‘Good-evening, 
General Hill,” said Jackson. 

Hill stood very straight, his red beard just gleaming a little in the 
dusky tent. ‘‘I am come to prefer a request, sir.”’ 

*sves.. What Js itr” : 

**A week ago, upon the crossing of the Potomac, you placed me 
under arrest for what you conceived — for disobedience to orders. 
Since then General Branch has commanded the Light Division.” 

cc Yes.”’ 

“T feel certain, sir, that battle is imminent. General Branch is a 
good and brave soldier, but — but — Iam come to beg, sir, that 
I may be released from arrest till the battle is over.” 

Stonewall Jackson, sitting stiffly, looked at the other standing, 
tense, energetic, before him. Something stole into his face that 
without being a smile was like a smile. It gave a strange effect of 


598 THE LONG ROLL 


mildness, tenderness. It was gone almost as soon as it had come, 
but it had been there. ‘‘I can understand your feeling, sir,” he said. 
“A battle zs imminent. Until it is over you are restored to your 
command.” 

The detachment of the Army of Northern Virginia going against 
Harper’s Ferry crossed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal at Wil- 
liamsport and forded the Potomac a few hundred yards below the 
ferry. A. P. Hill, McLaws, Walker, Jackson’s own, the long column 
overpassed the silver reaches, from the willows and sycamores of the 
Maryland shore to the tall and dreamy woods against the Virginia 
sky. ‘We know this place,” said the old Army of the Valley. ‘‘Dam 
No. 5’s just above there!” Regiment by regiment, as it dipped into 
the water, the column broke into song. “Carry me back to Old 
Virginny!”’ sang the soldiers. 

At Martinsburg were thirty-five hundred blue troops. Stonewall 
Jackson sent A. P. Hill down by the turnpike; he himself made a 
détour and came upon the town from the west. The thirty-five hun- — 
dred blue troops could retire southward, a thing hardly to their lik- 
ing, or they could hasten eastward and throw themselves into Har- 
per’s Ferry. As was anticipated, they chose the latter course. 

Stonewall Jackson entered Martinsburg amid acclaim. Here he 
rested his troops a few hours, then in the afternoon swung eastward 
and bivouacked upon the Opequon. “At early dawn,” he marched 
again. Ahead rode his cavalry, and they kept the roads on two sides 
of Harper’s Ferry. A dispatch came from General Lafayette 
McLaws. General Jackson : — After some fighting I have got the 
Maryland Heighis. Loudoun Heights in possession of General 
Walker. Enemy cut off north and east. 

“Good! good!” said Jackson. “North, east, south, and west.” 

On the Maryland side of the Potomac, some miles to the north of 
Harper’s Ferry, Lee likewise received a report — brought in haste 
by a courier of Stuart’s. General: —The enemy seems to have 
waked up. McClellan reported moving toward South Mountain with 
some rapidity. I am holding Crampton and Turner’s Gaps. What 
are my orders? 

Lee looked eastward toward South Mountain and southward to 
Harper’s Ferry. “General McClellan can only be guessing. We 
must gain time for General Jackson at Harper’s Ferry.” He sent 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 599 


word to Stuart. “‘D. H. Hill’s division returning to South Moun- 
gain. General Longstreet ordered back from Hagerstown. We must 
gain time for General Jackson. Hold the gaps.” 

D. H. Hill and Stuart held them. High above the valleys ran the 
roads — and all the slopes were boulder-strewn, crested moreover by 
broken stone walls. Hooker and Reno with the First and Ninth 
corps attacked Turner’s Gap, Franklin’s corps attacked Crampton’s 
Gap. High above the country side, bloody and determined, eight 
thousand against thirty thousand, raged the battle. 

Stonewall Jackson, closely investing Harper’s Ferry, posting his 
batteries on both sides of the river, on the Maryland Heights and 
Loudoun Heights, heard the firing to the northward. He knit his 
brows. He knew that McClellan had occupied Frederick, but he 
knew nothing of the copy of an order found wrapped around three 
cigars. ‘“‘What do you think of it, general?’”’ ventured one of his 
brigadiers. 

“T think, sir, it may be a cavalry engagement. Pleasanton came 
into touch with General Stuart and the Horse Artillery.” 

“Tt could not be McClellan in force ?” 

“T think not, sir. Not unless to his other high abilities were added 
energy and a knowledge of our plans. — Captain Page, this order 
to General McLaws: General : — You will attack so as to sweep with 
your artillery the ground occupied by the enemy, take his batteries in 
reverse, and otherwise operate against him as circumstances may JUus- 
tify. Lieutenant Byrd, this to General Walker: General : — You will 
take in reverse the battery on the turnpike and sweep with your artillery 
the ground occupied by the enemy, and silence the batteries on the island 
of the Shenandoah. Lieutenant Daingerfield, this to General A. P. 
Hill: General : — You will move along the left bank of the Shenandoah, 
and thus turn the enemy’s flank and enter Harper’s Ferry.” 

This was Sunday. From every hilltop blazed the grey batteries, 
and down upon the fourteen thousand blue soldiers cooped in 
Harper’s Ferry they sent an iron death. All afternoon they thun- 
dered, and the dusk knew no cessation. Harper’s Ferry was flame- 
ringed, there were flames among the stars. The air rocked and rang, 
the river shivered and hurried by. Deep night came and a half 
silence. There was a feeling as if the earth were panting for breath. 
All the air tasted powder. 


600 THE LONG ROLL 


A. P. Hill, struggling over ground supposed impassable, was in line 
of battle behind Bolivar Heights. Lawton and Jones were yet 
further advanced. All the grey guns were ready — at early dawn 
they opened. Iron death, iron death! —they rained it down on 
Harper’s Ferry and the fourteen thousand in garrison there. They 
silenced the blue guns. Then the bugles blew loudly, and Hill as- 
saulted. There were lines of breastworks and before them an abat- 
tis. The Light Division tore through the latter, struck against the 
first. From the height behind thundered the grey artillery. 

For a day and a night the blue defence had been stubborn. It was 
over. Out from the eddying smoke, high from the hilltop within the 
town, there was shaken a white flag. A. P. Hill received the place’s 
surrender, and Stonewall Jackson rode to Bolivar Heights and then 
into the town. Twelve thousand prisoners, thirteen thousand stands 
of arms, seventy-three guns, a great prize of stores, horses, and wag- 
ons came into his hand with Harper’s Ferry. 

On the Bolivar turnpike the Federal General White and his staff 
met the conqueror. The first, general and staff, were handsomely 
mounted, finely equipped, sparklingly clean and whole. The last 
was all leaf brown — dust and rain and wear and tear, scarfed and 
stained huge boots, and shabby forage cap. The surrender was un- 
conditional. Formalities over, there followed some talk, a hint on 
the side of the grey of generous terms, some expression on the side 
of the blue of admiration for great fighters, some regret from both 
for the mortal wound of Miles, the officer in command. Stonewall 
Jackson rode into the town with the Federal general. The streets 
were lined with blue soldiers crowding, staring. ‘That’s him, boys! 
That’s Jackson! That’s him! Well!” 

Later A. P. Hill came to the lower room in astone house where the 
general commanding sat writing a dispatch to Lee. Jackson fin- 
ished the thing in hand, then looked up. ‘‘General Hill, the Light 
Division did well. I move almost at once, but I shall leave you here 
in command until the prisoners and public property are disposed of. 
You will use expedition.” 

“T am not, then, sir, to relinquish the command to General 
Branch ?” 

“You are not, sir. Battle will follow battle, and you will lead the 
Light Division. Be more careful hereafter of my orders.” 


SPECIAL ORDERS, NO. 191 601 


ei will try sir. 

“Good! good! — What is it, colonel?” 

‘““A courier, sir, from General Lee.” 

The courier entered, saluted, and gave the dispatch. Jackson 
read it, then read it aloud, figure, mien, and voice as quiet as if he 
were repeating some every-day communication. 


ON THE MARCH, Sepiember 14th. 
GENERAL, —I regret to say that McClellan has, in some unac- 
countable fashion, discovered the div:sion of the army as well as its 
objectives. We have had hard fighting to-day on South Mountain, 
D. H. Hill and Longstreet both suffering heavily. The troops fought 
with great determination and held the passes until dusk. We are 
now falling back on Sharpsburg. Use all possible speed in joining me 

there. 
LEE. 


Stonewall Jackson rose. “General Hill, arrange your matters 
as rapidly as possible. Sharpsburg on the Antietam. Seventeen 
miles.” 


CHAPIER. XLII 


SHARPSBURG 


burg was Artillery Hell!” 

“‘Sharpsburg,” said the infantry of the nee of Northern 
Virginia. “Sharpsburg! That was the field where an infantryman 
knew that he stood on the most dangerous spot on the earth!”’ 

Through the passes of the South Mountain, over Red Hill, out 
upon the broken ground east of the Antietam poured the blue tor- 
rent — McClellan and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with 
a narrow grey sea — not thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet 
upon the road from Harper’s Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent 
and uproar, clashed the two colours. 

There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of 
dark woods. It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turn- 
pike, and it marked the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the 
left. Before him was Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Double- 
day and Ricketts. 

From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked 
from Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. 
He looked to the Harper’s Ferry Road, but he did not see what he 
wished to see — A. P. Hill’s red battle shirt. ‘Artillery Hell” had 
begun. There was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All 
the country side, all the little Maryland villages and farmhouses 
blenched beneath thatsound. Lee put down his field glass. He stood, 
calm and grand, the smoke and uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge 
Guns came by, going to some indicated quarter of the field. In 
thunder they passed below the knoll, the iron war-beasts, the gun- 
ners with them, black with powder and grime! All saluted; but 
one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at the 
guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at the 
salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught 
up with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee an- 


GS tere ae said long afterwards Stephen D. Lee. ‘“‘Sharps- 


SHARPSBURG 603 


swered a glance of his chief of staff. “Yes. It was my youngest son. 
It was Rob.” 

The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and 
how ghastly battles surged about small country churches! The 
Prince of Peace, if he indwelled here, must have bowed his head and 
mourned. Sunrise struck upon its white walls; then came a shell and 
pierced them. The church became the core of the turmoil, the white, 
still reef against which beat the wild seas in storm. 

Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle 
flags were bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in 
time, regular as a beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his 
fourteen thousand men. He crossed the turnpike, he came down on 
the Dunkard church. “ Yaii! Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!”’ yelled the 
grey sea, — no time at all, only fierce determination. Sometimes a 
grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there was no other music, save 
the thunder of the guns and the long rattle, never ceasing, of the 
musketry. There were battle flags, squares of crimson with a starry 
Andrew’s cross. They went forward, they shrank back. Standard- 
bearers were killed. Gaunt, powder-grimed hands caught at the 
staves, lifted them; the battle-flags went forward again. 

Doubleday struck and Ricketts. They charged against Stonewalk 
Jackson and the narrow grey sea. All the ground was broken; 
alignment was lost; blue waves and grey went this way and that 
in a broken, tumultuous fray. But the blue waves were the heavier; 
in mass alone they outdid the grey. They pushed the grey sea 
back, back, back toward the dark wood about the Dunkard church! 
Then Stonewall Jackson came along the front, riding in a pelting, 
leaden rain. “Steady, men. Steady! God is over us!” His men re- 
ceived him with a cry of greeting and enthusiasm that was like a 
shriek, it was so wild and high. His power upon them had grown 
and grown. He was Stonewall Jackson! He was Stonewall Jacksen! 
First, they would die for those battle-flags and the cause they rep- 
resented; second, they would die for one another, comrades, breth- 
ren! third, they would die for Stonewall Jackson! They lifted their 
voices for him now, gaunt and ragged troops with burning eyes. 
Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall Jackson! Virginia! Virginia! Vir- 
ginia!l the South! the South! He turned his horse, standing in the 
whistling, leaden rain. “ Forward, and drive them!”’ 


604 THE LONG ROLL 


Lawton and D. H. Hill leaped against Meade. He was a staunch 
fighter, but he gave back. The wood about the Dunkard church 
appeared to writhe like Dante’s wood, it was so full of groaning, of 
maimed men beside the tree trunks. The dead lay where they fell, 
and the living stepped upon them. Meade gave back, back — and 
then Mansfield came in thunder to reinforce the blue. 

The grey fought as even in this war they had hardly fought be- 
fore. They were so gaunt, they were so ragged, they were so tired! 
But something ethnic was coming more and more rapidly to the 
front. They were near again to savagenature. The Maryland woods 
might have been thicker, darker, the small church might have been 
some boulder altar beside some early Old World river. They were a 
tribe again, and they were fighting another and much larger tribe 
whom they had reason, reason, reason to hate! Their existence was 
at stake and the existence of all that their hearts held dear. They 
fought with fury. About each were his tribesmen — all were bro- 
thers! Brother fought for brother, brother saw brother fall, brother 
sprang to avenge brother. Their lips were blackened from tearing 
cartridges; their eyes, large in their thin, bronzed faces, burned 
against the enemy; their fingers were quick, quick at the musket 
lock; the spirit was the spirit behind hurled stones of old, swung 
clubs, thrown javelins! They had a loved leader, a great strong head 
man who ruled them well and led them on to victory. They fought 
for him too, for his scant and curt praise, for his ‘‘ Good, Good!” 
They fought for their own lives, each man for his own life, for their 
tribe, their possessions, for women at home and children, for their 
brethren, their leader, their cause. Something else, too, of the past 
was there in force — hatred of him who opposed. They fought for 
hate at Sharpsburg, as they fought for love. The great star drew, 
the iron thong fell. Led and driven, the tribe fought gigantically. 


The battle became furious. Within the din of artillery and mus- 
ketry human voices, loud, imperative, giving orders, shouting, wail- 
ing, died like a low murmur in the blast. Out of the wildly drifting 
smoke, now dark, now flame-lit, forms emerged, singly or in great 
bodies, then the smoke drew together, hiding the struggle. There 
was blackness and grime as from the ash of a volcano. The blood 
pounded behind the temples, the eyeballs started, the tongue was 


SHARPSBURG 605 


thick in the mouth, battle smell and battle taste, a red light, and time 
in crashes like an earthquake-toppling city! The inequalities of the 
ground became exaggerated. Mere hillocks changed into rocky is- 
lands. Seize them, fortify them, take them before the blue can! The 
tall maize grew gigantically taller. Break through these miles of 
cane as often before we have broken through them, the foemen 
crashing before us down to their boats! The narrow tongues of 
woods widened, widened. Take these deep forests, use them for 
shelter, from them send forth these new arrows of death — fight, 
fight! in the rolling murk, the red light and crying! 

Before the Dunkard church Starke, commanding Jackson’s old 
division, was killed, Jones was wounded, Lawton wounded. Many 
field officers were down, many, many of lesser rank. Of the blue, 
Mansfield was killed, Hooker was wounded, and Hartsuff and 
Crawford. The grey had pressed the blue back, back! Now in turn 
the blue drove the grey. The walls of the white church were splashed 
with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay at the door; within 
were those of the wounded who could get there. But the shells came 
too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came in, ebon, 
bloodstained, and grinning. The Prince of Peace was crowded out. 

The artillery was deafening. In the midst of a tremendous burst 
of sound D. H. Hill flung in the remainder of his division. Sumner 
came through the smoke. The grey and blue closed in a death grap- 
ple. From toward the centre, beneath the howling storm rose a 
singing — 

The race is not to them that’s got 
The longest legs to run. 


‘“Hood’s Texans! Hood’s Texans!” cried the Stonewall and all the 
other brigades on the imperilled left. ‘‘Come on, Hood’s Texans! 
Come on! Yaaaii! Yaaaaaiih!”’ 


Nor the battle to those people, 
That shoots the biggest gun. 


The Texans came to the Dunkard church. Stonewall Jackson 
launched a thunderbolt, grey as steel, all his men moving up as one, 
against the opposing, roaring sea. The sea gave back. Then Sumner 
called in Sedgwick’s fresh troops. 

Allan Gold, fighting with the 65th, took the colours from the last 


606 THE LONG ROLL 


of the colour guard. He was tall and strong and he swung them high. 
The glare from an exploding shell showed him and the battle flag. 
Gone was the quiet schoolteacher, gone even the scout and woods- 
man. He stood a great Viking, with yellow hair, and the battle rage 
had come to him. He began to chant, unconscious as a harp through 
which strikes a strong wind. “Comeon!” hechanted. “‘Come on! 
“Sixty-fifth, come on! 
Come on, the Stonewall! 
Remember Manassas, 
The first and the second Manassas! 
Remember McDowell, 
Remember Front Royal, 
Remember the battle of Winchester, 
Remember Cross Keys, 
Remember Port Republic, 
The battle of Kernstown, and all our battles and skirmishes, 
Our marches and forced marches, bivouacs, and camp-fires, 
Brother’s hand in brother’s hand, and the battle to-morrow! 
Remember the Seven Days, Seven Days, Seven Days! 
Remember the Seven Days! Remember Cedar Run. 
The Groveton Wood, and the Railroad cut at Manassas 
Where you threw stones when your cartridges were gone, where you struck with 
the bayonet, 
And the General spoke to you then, ‘Steady, men, steady!’ 
Remember Chantilly, remember Loudoun and Maryland Heights. 
Harper’s Ferry was yesterday. Remember and strike them again! 
Come on, 65th! Come on,the Stonewall!” 


Back through the cornfield before the Dunkard church fell the 
blue. Dead and dying choked the cornfield as the dead and dying 
had choked the cane brake. Blade and stalks were beaten down, the 
shells tore up the earth. The blue reformed and came again, a resist- 
less mass. Heavier and heavier, Fighting Joe Hooker, with Meade 
and Doubleday and Ricketts and Sumner, struck against Stone- 
wall Jackson! Back came the grey to the little Dunkard church. All 
around it, wood and open filled with clangour. The blue pressed in 
— the grey were giving way, were giving way! An out-worn com- 
pany raised a cry, ‘They ’re flanking us!” Something like a shiver 
passed over the thinning lines, then, grey and haggard, they tore 
another cartridge. Stonewall Jackson’s voice came from behind a 
reef of smoke. “Stand fast, men! Stand fast. There are troops on 
the road from Harper’s Ferry. It is General McLaws. Stand fast!” 


SHARPSBURG 607 


It was McLaws, with his black bullet head, his air of a Roman 
Consul! In he thundered with his twenty-five hundred men, tawny 
with the dust of the seventeen miles from Harper’s Ferry. He 
struck Sedgwick full. For five minutes there was brazen clangour 
and shouting and an agony of effort, then the blue streamed back, 
past the Dunkard wood and church, back into the dreadful corn- 
field. 

Maury Stafford, sent with a statement to the commander-in- 
chief, crossed in one prolonged risk of life from the wild left to the 
only less stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French 
and Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge — a part of D. 
H. Hill’s line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, 
that, later, was given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody 
Lane. Lee was found standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. “I yet 
look for A. P. Hill,” he said. ‘“ He has a talent for appearing at iden- 
tically the right moment.” 

Stafford gave his statement. All over the field the staff had suf- 
fered heavily. Some were dead, many were wounded. Those who 
were left did treble duty. Lee sent this officer on to Longstreet, 
holding the long ridge on the right. 

Stafford rode through the withering storm across that withered 
field. There seemed no light from the sky; the light was the glare 
from the guns. He marked, through a rift in the smoke, a battery 
where it stood upon a height, above felled trees. He thought it was 
Pelham’s — the Horse Artillery. It stood for a moment, outlined 
against the orange-bosomed cloud, then, like an army of wraiths, the 
smoke came between and hid it. His horse frightened at a dead 
man in his path. The start and plunging were unusual, and the rider 
looked to see the reason. The soldier had drawn letters from his 
breast and had died with them in his hands. The unfolded, flutter- 
ing sheets stirred as though they had life. Stafford, riding on, found 
the right and found Longstreet looking sombrely, like an old eagle 
from his eyrie. ‘‘I told General Lee,” he said “that we ought never 
to have divided. I don’t see A. P. Hill. You tell General Lee that 
I’ve only got D. R. Jones and the knowledge that we fight like hell, 
and that Burnside is before me with fourteen thousand men.” 

Stafford retraced his way. The ground beneath was burned and 
scarred, the battle cloud rolled dark, the minies sang beside his ear. 


608 THE LONG ROLL 


Now he was in a barren place, tasting of powder, smelling of smoke, 
now lit, now darkened, but vacant of human life, and now he was in 
a press of men, grey forms advancing and retreating, or standing 
firing, and now he was where fighting had been and there was left 
a wrack of the dead and dying. He reached the centre and gave his 
message, then turned toward the left again. A few yards and his 
horse was killed under him. He disengaged himself and presently 
caught at the bridle and stayed another. There were many riderless 
horses on the field of Sharpsburg, but he had hardly mounted before 
this one, too, was killed. He went on afoot. He entered a sunken 
road, dropped between rough banks overhung by a few straggling 
trees. The road was filled with men lying down, all in shadow be- 
neath the rolling battle smoke. Stafford thought it a regiment wait- 
ing for orders; then he saw that they were all dead men. He must go 
back to the Dunkard wood, and this seemed his shortest way. He 
entered the lane and went up it as quickly as he might for the forms 
that lay thick in the discoloured light. It looked as though the earth 
were bleeding, and all the people were fantastic about him. Some 
lay as straight as on a sculptured tomb, and some were hooped, and 
some lay like a cross, and some were headless. As he stepped with 
what care he might, a fierce yelling broke out on the side that was 
the grey side. There was a charge coming — already he saw the red 
squares tossing! He moved to the further side of the sunken road and 
braced himself against the bank, putting his arm about a twisted, 
protruding cedar. D. H. Hill’s North Carolinians hung a moment, 
tall, gaunt, yelling, then swooped down into the sunken lane, passed 
over the dead, mounted the other ragged bank and went on. Staf- 
ford waited to hear the shock. It came; full against a deep blue 
wave. Richardson had been killed and Hancock commanded here. 
The blue wave was strong. The sound of the mélée was frightful; 
then out of it burst a loud huzzahing. Stafford straightened himself. 
The grey were coming back, and after them the blue. Almost before 
he could unclasp his arm from the cedar, the first spray of gaunt, 
exhausted, bleeding men came over and down into the sunken lane. 
All the grey wave followed. At the moment there outburst a renewed 
and tremendous artillery battle. The smoke drifting across the 
Bloody Lane was like the fall of night, a night of cloud and storm. 
Orange flashes momentarily lit the scene, and the sullen thunders 


SHARPSBURG 609 


rolled. The grey, gaunt and haggard, but their colours with them, 
overpassed the dead and wounded, now choking the sunken road. 
Behind them were heard the blue, advancing and huzzahing. The 
grey wave remounted the bank down which it plunged fifteen min- 
utes before. At the top it stayed a moment, thin and grey, spectral 
in the smoke pall, the battle flags like hovering, crimson birds. A 
line of flame leaped, one long crackle of musketry, then it resumed 
its retreat, falling back on the west wood. The blue, checked a mo- 
ment by that last volley, now poured down into the sunken road, 
overpassed the thick ranks of the dead and wounded, mounted, 
and swept on in a counter charge. 

Maury Stafford had left the cedar and started across with the last 
broken line of the grey. Going down the crumbling bank his spur 
caught in a gnarled and sprawling root. The check was absolute, 
and brought him violently to his knees. Before he could free himself 
the grey had reached the opposite crest, fired its volley, and gone on. 
He started to follow. He heard the blue coming, and it was expedi- 
ent to get out of this trap. Before him, from the figures covering the 
earth like thrown jackstraws, an arm was suddenly lifted. The hand 
clutched at him, passing. He looked down. It was a boy of nineteen 
with a ghastly face. The voice came up: “ Whoever you are, you’re 
alive and well, and I’m dying. You'll take it and put astamp on it 
and mail it, won’t you ? I’m dying. People ought to do things when 
the dying ask them to.” 

Stafford looked behind him, then down again. “Do what? 
Quick! They ’re coming.” 

The hand would not relax its clasp, but its fellow fumbled at the 
grey jacket. ‘It’s my letter. They won’t know if they don’t get it. 
My side hurts, but it don’t hurt like knowing they won’t know... . 
that I wassorry.”” The face worked. “It’s here but I can’t — Please 
Fett: 

“You must let me go,”’ said Stafford, and tried to unclasp the 
hand. “Stay any longer and I will be killed or taken.” 

The hand closed desperately, both hands now. “For God’s sake! 
I don’t believe you ’ve got so hard a heart. Take it and stamp it and 
mail it. If they don’t know they ’ll never understand and I’ll die 
knowing they ’ll never understand. For God’s sake!” 

Stafford knelt beside him, opened the grey jacket, and took out 


610 THE LONG ROLL 


the letter. Blood was upon it, but the address was legible. “Die 
easy. I’ll stamp and mail it. I will send a word with it, too, if you 
like.” 

A light came into the boy’s face. “Tell them that I was like the 
prodigal son, but that I’m going home — I’m going home — ” 

The arms fell, the breast ceased to heave, the head drew backward. 
Death came and stamped the light upon the face. Before Stafford 
could get to his feet, the blue wave had plunged into the trough. He 
remembered using his pistol, and he remembered a dizziness of being 
borne backward. He remembered that a phrase had gone through 
his mind “the instability of all material things.” Then came a blank. 
He did not assume that he had lost consciousness, but simply he 
could not remember. He had been wrecked in a turbulent, hostile 
ocean. It had made him and others captives, and now they were 
together at a place which he remembered was cailed the Roulette 
House. An hour might have passed, two hours; he really could not 
tell. There were a number of prisoners, most of them badly 
wounded. They lay in the back yard of the place, on the steps of out- 
houses, with blue soldiers for guards. A surgeon came through the 
yard, and helped a little the more agonizedly hurt. He glanced at 
Stafford’s star and sash, came across and offered to bind up the cut 
across his forehead. “An awful field,” he said. ‘This war is getting 
horrible. You’re a Virginian, are n’t you?” 

ccc Yes. ) 

“Used to know a lot of Virginia doctors. Liked them first rate! 
Now we are enemies, and it seems to me a pity. Guess it’s as 
Shakespeare says, “What fools these mortals be!’ I know war’s 
getting to seem to me an awful foolishness. That cornfield out 
there is sickening — Now! that bleeding ’s stopped —” 

On the left, around and before the Dunkard church, the very fury of 
the storm brought about at last a sudden failing, a stillness and cessa- 
tion that seemed like those of death. Sound enough there was un- 
doubtedly, and in the centre the battle yet roared, but by comparison 
there seemed a dark and sultry calm. Far and near lay the fallen. 
It was now noon, and since dawn twelve thousand men had been 
killed or wounded on this left, attacked by Fighting Joe Hooker, 
held by Stonewall Jackson. Fifteen general officers were dead or 
disabled. Hardly a brigade, not many regiments, were officered 


SHARPSBURG 611 


as they had been when the sun rose. There was an exhaustion. 
Franklin had entered on the field, and one might have thought that 
the grey would yet be overpowered. But all the blue forces were 
broken, disorganized; there came an exhaustion, a lassitude. Mc- 
Clellan sent an order forbidding another attack. Cornfield and 
wood lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still. 

Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. 
They brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their 
great numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to 
him. “General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all 
the fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not 
like hospitals — but would you come and look, sir?” 

The general shook his head. ‘‘ What is the use of looking? There 
have to be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor.” 

“T have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they 
are so overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles 
in our rear — I have thought that we might manage to get the less 
badly hurt across. If they attack again and the day should end in 
Geieat 

‘““What have you got there?”’ asked Jackson. ‘‘ Apples?” 

“Yes, sir. I passed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. 
Would you like —’’ 

“Yes. I breakfasted very early.”” He took the rosy fruit and 
began to eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed 
the scene before him, — trampled wood where the shells had cut 
through bough and branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed 
that a whirlwind had passed, his resting, shattered commands, the 
dead and the dying, the dead horses, the disabled guns, the drifting 
sulphurous smoke, and, across the turnpike, in the fields and by the 
east wood, the masses of blue, overcanopied also by sulphurous 
smoke. He finished the apple, took out a handkerchief, and wiped 
fingers and lips. “‘Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst. And 
never use the word defeat.” - 

He jerked his hand into the air. “Do your best for the wounded, 
doctor, do all that is humanly possible, but do it kere! I am going 
now to the centre to see General Lee.” 

Behind the wood, in a grassy hollow moderately sheltered from 
the artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young 


612 THE LONG ROLL 


surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medi- 
cal director. “Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General 
McLaws. They’ve just brought their colonel in — Fauquier Cary, 
you know. I wish you would look at his arm.” 

The two looked. “‘There’s but one thing, colonel.” 

“Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with.” He 
straightened himself on the boards where the men had laid him. 
“Sedgwick, too! Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two 
savages decked with beads and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever 
there was fratricidal strife! All right, doctor. I had a great-uncle 
lost his arm at Yorktown. Can’t remember him, — my father and 
mother loved to talk of him — old Uncle Edward. All right — it’s 
all right.” 

The two doctors were talking together. “Only a few ounces left. 
Better use it here?”’ 

“Yes, yes! —One minute longer, colonel. We’ve got a little 
chloroform.” : 

The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. “Is that all you’ve got?” 

“Ves. We took a fair quantity at Manassas, but God only knows 
the amount we could use! Now.” 

The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that 
had not been torn by the exploding shell. “‘No, no! I don’t want it. 
Keep it for some one with a leg to cut off!”” He smiled, a charming, 
twisted smile, shading into a grimace of pain. ‘‘ No chloroform at 
- Yorktown! I’ll be as much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! 
Yes, yes, I’m in earnest, doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; 
I’m ready.” 

On the knoll by Sharpsburg Lee and Jackson stood and looked 
toward the right. McClellan had apparently chosen to launch three 
battles in one day; in the early morning against the Confederate left, 
at midday against its centre, now against its right. A message came 
from Longstreet. ‘‘ Burnside is in motion. I’ve got D. R. Jones and 
twenty-five hundred men.” 

It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thou- 
sand men he came over the stone bridge across the Antietam. They 
were fresh troops; their flags were flying, their drums were beating, 
their bugles braying. The line moved with huzzahs toward the ridge 
held by Longstreet. From the left came tearing past the knoll the 


SHARPSBURG 613 


Confederate batteries. Lee was massing them in the centre, training 
them against the eastern foot of the ridge. There had been a lull in 
the storm, now Pelham opened with loud thunders. Other guns fol- 
lowed. The Federal batteries began to blaze; there broke out a mad- 
ness of sound. In the midst of it D. R. Jones with his twenty-five 
hundred men clashed with Burnside’s leading brigades. 

Stonewall Jackson pulled the forage cap lower, jerked his hand 
into the air. “Good! good! I will go, sir, and send in my freshest 
troops.” 

“Look,” said Lee. ‘Look, general! On the Harper’s Ferry 
road.” 

All upon the knoll turned and gazed. Air and light played with 
the battle smoke, drove it somewhat to one side and showed for a 
few seconds a long and sunlit road, the road from Harper’s Ferry. 
One of the staff began a low uncontrollable laughter. “‘By God! I 
see his red battle shirt! By God! I see his red battle shirt!” 

Lee with a glance checked the sound. He himself looked nobly 
lifted, grave and thankful. The battle smoke closed, obscuring the 
road, but the sound of marching men came along it, distinguishable 
even beneath the artillery fire. ‘Good, good!” said Jackson. “A. P. 
Hill is a good soldier.” : 

Tawny with the dust of the seventeen miles, at a double quick and 
yelling, the crimson battle flags slanting forward, in swung the 
Light Division! D. R. Jones rallied. Decimated, outworn, but dan- 
gerous, the aiding regiments from the left did well. The grey guns 
worked with a certain swift and steadfast grimness. From all the 
ridges of the Antietam the blue cannon thundered, thundered. Blue 
and grey, the musketry rolled. Sound rose into terrific volume, 
the eddying smoke blotted out the day. Artillery Hell — Infantry 
Inferno — the field of Sharpsburg roared now upon the right. 

The Horse Artillery occupied a low ridge like a headland jutting 
into a grassy field. Below, above, behind, the smoke rolled; in front 
the flame leaped from their guns, the shells sped. There was a great 
background of battle cloud, lit every ten seconds by the glare from 
an opposing battery. John Pelham stood directing. Six guns were in 
fierce and continuous action. The men serving them were picked 
artillery men. To and fro they moved, down they stooped, up they 
stood, stepped backward from the gun at fire, moved forward at 


614 THE LONG ROLL 


recoil, fell again to the loading with the precision of the drill 
ground. They were half naked, they were black with powder, glis- 
tening with sweat, some were bleeding. In the light from the guns 
all came boldly into relief; in the intermediate deep murk they 
sank from sight, became of the clouds, cloudy, mere shapes in the 
semi-darkness. 

Stonewall Jackson, returning to the Dunkard church and passing 
behind this headland, turned Little Sorrel’s head and came upon the 
plateau. Pelham met him. “Yes, general, we’re doing well. Yes, 
sir, it’s holding out. Caissons were partly filled during the lull.”’ 

“Good, good!”’ said Jackson. He dismounted and walked forward 
to the guns. Pelham followed. “I don’t think you should be out 
here, general. They’ve got our range very accurately —”’ 

The other apparently did not notice the remark. He stood near 
one of the guns and turned his eyes upon the battle on the right. 
“Longstreet strikes a heavy blow. He and Hill will push them back. 
Colonel Pelham, train two guns upon that body of the enemy at the 
ford.” | 

Pelham moved toward the further guns. The howitzer nearest 
Jackson was fired, reloaded, fired again. The men beside it stood 
back. It blazed, thundered, recoiled. A great, black, cylindrical 
shell came with a demoniac shriek. At the moment the platform was 
lit with the battle glare. Its fall was seen. It fell, smoking, imme- 
diately beside Stonewall Jackson. Such was the concussion of the 
air that for a moment he was stunned. Involuntarily his arm went 
up before his eyes; he made a backward step. Pelham, returning from 
the further guns and still some yards away, gave a shout of warning 
and horror; from all the men who had seen the thing there burst a 
similar cry. With the motion almost of the shell itself, a man of the 
crew of the howitzer reached the torn earth and the cylinder. His 
body half naked, blackened, brushed, in passing, the general. He 
put his hands beneath the heated, smoking bottle of death, lifted it, 
and rushed on to the edge of the escarpment fifty feet away. Here 
he swung it with force, threw it from him with burned hands. Half- 
way to the field below it exploded. 

Pelham, very pale, protested with some sternness. “You can’t 
stay here, general! My men can’t work with you here. It does n’t 
matter about us, but it does matter about you. Please go, sir.” 


SHARPSBURG 615 


“T am going, colonel. I have seen what I wished to see. Who is 
the man who took up the shell?” 

Pelham turned to the howitzer. “Which of you was it?” 

Half a dozen voices were raised in answer. “ Deaderick, sir. But 
he burned his hands badly and he asked the lieutenant if he could 
go to the rear —” 

“Good, good!”’ said Stonewall Jackson. “He did well. But there 
are many brave men in this army.’”’ He went back to Little Sorrel, 
where he stood cropping the dried grass, and stiffly mounted. As he 
turned from the platform and the guns, all lit again by the orange 
glare, there came from the right an accession of sound, then high, 
shrill, and triumphant the Confederate yell. A shout arose from the 
Horse Artillery. ‘“‘They’re breaking! they’re breaking! Burnside, 
too, is breaking! Yaaaii! Yaaaaiiihh! Yaaaaaiiihhh!”’ 


CHAPTER XLIV 
BY THE OPEQUON 


HE battle of Sharpsburg was a triumph neither for blue nor 

grey, for North nor South. With the sinking of the sun 

ceased the bloody, prolonged, and indecisive struggle. Blue 
and grey, one hundred and thirty thousand men fought that battle. 
When the pale moon came up she looked on twenty-one thousand 
dead and wounded. 

The living ranks sank down and slept beside the dead. Lee on 
Traveller waited by the highroad until late night. Man by man his 
generals came to him and made their report — their ghastly report. 
“Very good, general. What is your opinion?” — “TI think, sir, that 
we should cross the Potomac to-night.’ — “Very well, general. 
What is your opinion?” — “General Lee, we should cross the 
Potomac to-night.’”’ — “‘ Yes, general, it has been our heaviest field. 
What is your advice ?”” — “General Lee, I am here to do what you 
tell me to do.” 

Horse and rider, Traveller and Robert Edward Lee, stood in the 
pale light above the Antietam. “Gentlemen, we will not cross the 
Potomac to-night. If General McClellan wants to fight in the 
morning I will give him battle again. — And now we are all very 
tired. Good-night. Good-night!” 

The sun came up, dim behind the mist. The mist rose, the morn- 
ing advanced. The September sunshine lay like vital warmth upon 
the height and vale, upon the Dunkard church and the wood about 
it, upon the cornfields, and Burnside’s bridge and the Bloody Lane, 
and upon all the dead men in the cornfields, in the woods, upon the 
heights, beside the stream, in the lane. The sunshine lay upon the 
dead, as the prophet upon the Shunamite’s child, but it could not 
reanimate. Grey and blue, the living armies gazed at each other 
across the Antietam. Both were exhausted, both shattered, the blue 
yet double in numbers. The grey waited for McClellan’s attack. It 
did not come. The ranks, lying down, began to talk. “He ain’t 


BY THE OPEQUON 617 


going to attack! He’s cautious.’ — “He’s had enough.’ — “So’ve 
I. O God!”’— “Never saw such a fight. Wish those buzzards 
would go away from that wood over there! They’re so dismal.’ — 
“No, McClellan ain’t going to attack!’ — “Then why don’t we at- 
tack?”? — “Go away, Johnny! We’re mighty few and powerfully 
tired.” — “Well, J think so, too. We might just as well attack. 
Great big counter stroke! Crumple up Meade and Doubleday and 


Ricketts over there! Turn their right!” — “’T ain’t impossible! 
Marse Robert and Old Jack could manage it.” — “No, they could 
n’t!”? — “Yes, they could!” — “You’re a fool! Look at that posi- 


tion, stronger ’n Thunder Run Mountain, and Hooker’s got troops 
he did n’t have in yesterday! ’N those things like beehives in a 
row are Parrotts ’n Whitworths’ ’n Blakeley’s. ’N then look at 
us. Oh, yes! we’ve got spirit, but spirit’s got to have a body to rush 


those guns.”’ — “Thar ain’t anything Old Jack could n’t do if he 
tried!’”» — “Yes, there is!” “Thar ain’t! How dast you say that ?” 
— “There is! He could n’t be a fool if he tried — and he ain’t 
agoing to try!”’ 


The artillerist, Stephen D. Lee, came to headquarters on the 
knoll by Sharpsburg. ‘General Lee sent for me. Tell him, please, I 
am here.’’ Lee appeared. ‘“‘Good-morning, Colonel Lee. You are 
to go at once to General Jackson. Tell him that I sent you to re- 
port to him.” The officer found Stonewall Jackson at the Dunk- 
ard church. ‘General, General Lee sent me to report to you.”’ 

“Good, good! Colonel, I wish you to take a ride with me. We 
will go to the top of the hill yonder.” 

They went up to the top of the hill, past dead men and horses, and 
much wreckage of caissons and gun wheels. “There are probably 
sharpshooters in that wood across the stream,” said Jackson. ‘Do 
not expose yourself unnecessarily, colonel.’’ Arrived at the level 
atop they took post in a little copse, wildly torn and blackened, a 
wood in Artillery Hell. ‘‘Take your glasses, colonel, and examine 
the enemy’s line of battle.” 

The other lifted the field-glass and with it swept the Antietam, 
and the fields and ridges beyond it. He looked at the Federal left, 
and he looked at the Federal centre, and he looked along the Federal 
right, which was opposite, then he lowered the glasses. “General, 
they have a very strong position, and they are in great force.” 


618 THE LONG ROLL 


“Good! I wish you to take fifty pieces of artillery and crush that 
force.” 

Stephen D. Lee was a brave man. He said nothing now, but he: 
stood amoment in silence, and then he took his field-glass and looked 
again. He looked now at the many and formidable Federal batteries 
clustered like dark fruit above the Antietam, and now at the masses 
of blue infantry, and now at the positions, under artillery and mus- 
ketry fire, which the Confederate batteries must take. He put the 
glass down again. “Yes, general. Where shall I get the fifty guns ?” 

“How many have you 2?” 

“T had thirty. Some were lost, a number disabled. I have 
twelve.” 

“Just so. Well, colonel, I could give you a few, and Genera! Lee 
tells me he can furnish some.” 

The other fingered a button on his coat for a moment, then, 
“Yes, general. Shall I go for the guns?” 

“No, not yet.” Stonewall Jackson laid his large hands in their 
worn old brown gauntlets, one over the other, upon his saddle bow. 
He, too, looked at the Federal right and the guns on the heights like 
dark fruit. His eyes made just a glint of blue light below the forage 
cap. “Colonel Lee, can you crush the Federal right with fifty guns ?” 

The artillerist drew a quick breath, let the button alone, and 
raised his head higher. “I can try, general. I can do it if any one 
cans. 

“That is not what I asked you, sir. If I give you fifty guns can 
you crush the Federal right?” 

The other hesitated. ‘‘General, I don’t know what you want of 
me. Is it my technical opinion as an artillery officer? or do you 
want to know if I will make the attempt? If you give me the order 
of course I will make it!” 

“Yes, colonel. But I want your positive opinion, yes or no. Can 
you crush the Federal right with fifty guns?” 

The artillerist looked again, steadying arm and glass against a 
charred bough. “General, it cannot be done with fifty guns and the 
troops you have here.” 

Hilltop and withered wood hung a moment silent in the air, sunny 
but yet with a taste of all the powder that had been burned. Then 
said Jackson, ‘‘Good! Let us ride back, colonel.” 


BY THE OPEQUON 619 


They turned their horses, but Stephen Lee with some emotion 
began to put the case. “You forced me, general, to say what I did 
say. If you send the guns, I beg of you not to give them to another! 
I will fight them to the last extremity — ”’ He looked to the other 
anxiously. To say to Stonewall Jackson that you must despair and 
die where he sent-you in to conquer! 

But Jackson had no grimness of aspect. He looked quietly 
thoughtful. It was even with a smile of sweetness that he cut short 
the other’s pleading. “It’s all right, colonel, it’s all right! Every one 
knows that you are a brave officer and would fight the guns well.” 
At the foot of the hill he checked Little Sorrel. ‘We ’ll part here, 
colonel. You go at once to General Lee. Tell him all that has hap- 
pened since he sent you to me. Tell him that you examined the Fed- 
eral position. Tell him that I forced you to give the technical opinion 
of an artillery officer, and tell him what that opinion is. That is all, 
colonel.” 

The September day wore on. Grey and blue armies rested inactive 
save that they worked at burying the dead. Then, in the afternoon, 
information came to grey headquarters. Humphrey’s division, 
pouring through the gaps of South Mountain, would in a few hours 
be at McClellan’s service. Couch’s division was at hand — there 
were troops assembling on the Pennsylvania border. At dark Lee 
issued his orders. During the night of the eighteenth the Army of 
Northern Virginia left the banks of the Antietam, wound silently 
down to the Potomac, and crossed to the Virginia shore. 

All night there fell a cold, fine, chilling rain. Through it the wagon 
trains crossed, the artillery with a sombre noise, the wounded who 
must be carried, the long column of infantry, the advance, the main, 
the rear. The corps of Stonewall Jackson was the last to ford the 
river. He sat on Little Sorrel, midway of the stream, and watched 
his troops go onward in the steady, chilling rain. Daybreak found 
him there, motionless as a figure in bronze, needing not to care for 
wind or sun or rain. 

The Army of Northern Virginia encamped on the road to Martins- 
burg. Thirty guns on the heights above Boteler’s Ford guarded its 
rear, and Jeb Stuart and his cavalry watched from the northern 
bank at Williamsport. McClellan pushed out from Sharpsburg a 
heavy reconnoissance, and on his side of the river planted guns. Fitz 


620 THE LONG ROLL 


John Porter, in command, crossed during the night a considerable 
body of troops. These advanced against Pendleton’s guns, took four 
of them, and drove the others back on the Martinsburg road. Pen- 
dleton reported to General Lee; Lee sent an order to Stonewall 
Jackson. The courier found him upon the bank of the Potomac, 
gazing at the northern shore. ‘‘Good!”’ he said. ‘I have ordered 
up the Light Division.” Seventy guns thundered from across 
the water. A. P. Hill in his red battle shirt advancing in that 
iron rain, took, front and flank, the Federal infantry. He drove 
them down from the bluff, he pushed them into the river; they 
showed black on the current. Those who got across, under the shelter 
of the guns, did not try again that passage. McClellan looked toward 
Virginia, but made no further effort, this September, to invade her. 
The Army of Northern Virginia waited another day above Boteler’s 
Ford, then withdrew a few miles to the banks of the Opequon. 

The Opequon, a clear and pleasing stream, meandered through 
the lower reaches of the great Valley, through a fertile, lovely coun- 
try, as yet not greatly scored and blackened by war’s torch and 
harrow. An easy ride to the westward and you arrived in Winches- 
ter, beloved of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson and the 2d Army 
Corps. As the autumn advanced, the banks of the Opequon, the yet 
thick forests that stretched toward the Potomac, the great maples, 
and oaks and gums and hickories that rose, singly or in clusters, from 
the rolling farm lands, put on a most gorgeous colouring. The air 
was mellow and sunny. From the camp-fires, far and near, there 
came always a faint pungent smell of wood smoke. Curls of blue 
vapour rose from every glade. The land seemed bathed in Indian 
summer. 

Through it in the mellow sunlight, beneath the crimson of the 
gums, the lighter red of the maples, the yellow of the hickories, the 
2d Army Corps found itself for weeks back on the drill ground. 
The old Army of the Valley crowed and clapped on the back the 
Light Division and D. H. Hill’s troops. ‘Old times come again! 
Jest like we used to do at Winchester! Chirk up, you fellows! Your 
drill’s improving every day. Old Jack ’ll let up on you after a while. 
Lord! it used to be seven hours a day!” 

Not only did the 2d Corps drill, it refitted. Mysteriously there 
came from Winchester a really fair amount of shoes and clothing. 


BY THE OPEQUON 621 


Only the fewest were now actually barefoot. In every regiment there 
went on, too, a careful cobbling. If by any means a shoe could be 
made to do, it was put in that position. Uniforms were patched and 
cleaned, and every day was washing day. All the hillsides were 
spread with soldiers’ shirts. The red leaves drifting down on them 
looked like blood-stains, but the leaves could be brushed away. The 
men, standing in the Opequon, whistled as they rubbed and wrung. 
Every day the recovered from hospitals, and the footsore stragglers, 
and the men detached or furloughed, came home to camp. There 
came in recruits, too — men who last year were too old, boys who 
last year were not old enough. “Look here, boys! Thar goes Father 
Time! — No, it’s Rip Van Winkle!” — “No, it’s Santa Claus! — 
Anyhow, he’s going to fight!” “Look here, boys! here comes another 
cradle. Good Lord, he ’s just a toddler! He don’t see a razor in his 
dreams yet! Quartermaster’s out of nursing-bottles!” ‘“Shet up! 
the way those children fight ’s a caution!”’ 

October drifted on, smooth as the Opequon. Red and yellow 
leaves drifted down, wood smoke arose, sound was wrapped as in 
fine wool, dulled everywhere to sweetness. Whirring insects, rippling 
water, the wood-chopper’s axe, the whistling soldiers, the drum-beat, 
the bugle-call, all were swept into a smooth current, steady, almost 
droning, somewhat dream-like. The 2d Corps would have said that 
it was a long time on the Opequon, but that on the whole it found 
the place a pleasing land of drowsy-head. 

Visitors came to the Opequon; parties from Winchester, offi- 
cers from the rst Corps commanded by Longstreet and encamped a 
few miles to the eastward, officers from the headquarters of the 
commander-in-chief. General Lee came himself on Traveller, and 
with Stonewall Jackson rode along the Opequon, under the scarlet 
maples. One day there appeared a cluster of Englishmen, Colonel 
the Honourable Garnet Wolseley; the Special Correspondent of the 
Times, the Honourable Francis Lawley, and the Special Corre- 
spondent of the [/lustrated London News, Mr. Frank Vizetelly. Gen- 
eral Lee had sent them over under the convoy of an officer, with a 
note to Stonewall Jackson. 

My DEAR GENERAL, — These gentlemen very especially wish to 


make your acquaintance. Yours, 
R. E. LEE. 


622 THE LONG ROLL 


They made it, beneath a beautiful, tall, crimson gum tree, where 
on a floor of fallen leaves Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson’s tent 
was pitched. A camp-stool, a wooden chair, and two boxes were 
placed. There was a respectful silence while the Opequon murmured 
by, then Garnet Wolseley spoke of the great interest which Eng- 
land — Virginia’s mother country — was taking in this struggle. 

“Ves, sir,” said Jackson. “It would be natural for a mother to 
take an even greater interest.” 

“And the admiration, general, with which we have watched your 
career — the career of genius, if I may say so! By Jove — ” 

“Yes, sir. It is not my career. God has the matter in hand.” 

“Well, He knows how to pick his lieutenants! — You have the 
most ideal place for a camp, general! But, I suppose, before these 
coloured leaves all fall you will be moving?”’ 

“It is an open secret, I suppose, sir,” said the correspondent of 
the Times, “that when McClellan does see fit to cross you will meet 
him east of the Blue Ridge?”’ 

“May I ask, sir,”’ said the correspondent of the J/lustrated News, 
“what you think of this latest move on the political chess-board — I 
mean Mr. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation?”’ 

“The leaves are,’’ said Jackson, “a beautiful colour. I was in 
England one autumn, Colonel Wolseley, but I did not observe our 
autumn colours in your foliage. Climate, doubtless. But what was 
my admiration were your cathedrals.”’ 

“Yes, general; wonderful, are they not? Music in stone. Should 
McClellan cross, would the Fredericksburg route — ”’ 

“Good! good! Music in stone! Which of your great church struc- 
tures do you prefer, sir?” 

“Why, sir, I might prefer Westminster Abbey. Would — ” 

“Good! Westminster Abbey. A soldier’s answer. I remember 
that I especially liked Durham. I liked the Galilee chapel and the 
tomb of the Venerable Bede. St. Cuthbert is buried there, too, is he 
HOLL 

“T really don’t remember, sir. Is he, Mr. Lawley ?” 

“T believe so.”’ 

“Yes, he is. You have n’t got any cathedrals here, General Jack- 


son, but you ’ve got about the most interesting army on the globe. 
Will McClellan — ” 


BY THE OPEQUON 623 


“T like the solidity of the early Norman. The foundations were 
laid in 1093, I believe?”’ 

“Very probably, general. Has General Lee —”’ 

“Tt has a commanding situation — an advantage which all of 
your cathedrals do not possess. I liked the windows best at York. 
What do you think, colonel ?” 

“T think that you are right, general. When your wars are over, I 
hope that you will visit England again. I suppose that you cannot 
say how soon that will be, sir?”’ 

‘“‘No, sir. Only God can say that. I should like to see Ely and 
Canterbury.” He rose. ‘‘Gentlemen, it has been pleasant to meet 
you. I hear the adjutant’s call. If you would like to find out 
how my men dril, Colonel Johnson may take you to the parade- 
ground.” 

Later, there arrived beneath the crimson gum four of Jeb Stuart’s 
officers, gallantly mounted and equipped, young and fine. To-day 
their usual careless dash was tempered by something of important 
gravity; if their eyes danced, it was beneath half-closed lids; they did 
not smile outright, but their lips twitched. Behind them an orderly 
bore a long pasteboard box. The foremost officer was Major Heros 
von Borcke, of General Stuart’s staff. All dismounted. Jackson 
came out of his tent. The air was golden warm; the earth was level 
before the tent, and on the carpet of small bright leaves was yet the 
table, the chair, the camp-stool, and the boxes. It made a fine, out-of- 
door room of audience. The cavalry saluted. Jackson touched the 
forage cap, and sat down. The staff officer, simple, big, and genuine, 
stood forward. ‘‘ Major Von Borcke, is it not? Well, major, what is 
General Stuart about just now?”’ 

“General, he is watching his old schoolmate, General McClel- 
lan. My general, I come on a graceful errand, a little gift from 
General Stuart bearing. He has so great an esteem and friend- 
ship for you, general; he asks that you accept so slight a token 
of that esteem and friendship and he would say affection, and he 
does say reverence. He says that from Richmond he has for this 
Senta, 

Major Heros von Borcke made a signal. The orderly advanced 
and placed upon the pine table the box. The other cavalry officers 
stepped a little nearer; two or three of Stonewall Jackson’s military 


624 THE LONG ROLL 


family came also respectfully closer; the red gum leaves made a rust- 
ling underfoot. 

“General Stuart is extremely kind,” said Jackson. “I have a 
high esteem for Jeb Stuart. You will tell him so, major.” 

Slowly, slowly, came off the lid. Slowly, slowly came away a 
layer of silver paper. Where on earth they got — in Richmond in 
1862 — the gay box, the silver paper, passes comprehension. The 
staff thought it looked Parisian, and nursed the idea that it had 
once held a ball gown. Slowly, slowly, out came the gift. 

A startled sound, immediately suppressed, was uttered by the 
military family. Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson merely looked a 
stone wall. The old servant Jim was now also upon the scene. “ Fo’ 
de Lawd!”’ said Jim. “‘Er new nuniform!”’ 

Fine grey cadet cloth, gold lace, silken facings, beautiful bright 
buttons, sash, belt, gauntlets — the leaves rustled loudly, but a 
chuckle from Jim in the background and a murmured “Dat 
are sumpin’ like!”’ was the only audible utterance. With empresse- 
ment each article was lifted from the box by Major Heros von 
Borcke and laid upon the pine boards beneath Stonewall Jackson’s 
eyes. The box emptied, Von Borcke, big, simple, manly, gravely 
beaming, stepped back from the table. ‘For General Jackson, 
with General Stuart’s esteem and admiration!” 

Stonewall Jackson, big, too, and to appearance simple, looked 
under the forage cap, smiled, and with one lean brown fin- 
ger touched almost timidly the beautiful, spotless cadet cloth. 
“Major von Borcke, you will give General Stuart my best 
thanks. He is, indeed, good. All this,’ he gravely indicated the 
loaded table, “is much too fine for the hard work I’d have to give 
it, and I shall have it put away for the present. But you tell 
General Stuart, major, that I will take the best care of his beau- 
tiful present, and that I will always prize it highly as a souvenir. 
It is, I think, about one o’clock. You will stay to dinner with me, 
T hope, major.” 

But the banks of the Opequon uttered a protest. “Oh, gen- 
eral!’ — “My general, you will hurt his feelings.’’ — “General, 
just try it on, at least!’ ‘Let us have our way, sir, just this once! 
We have been right good, have n’t we ? and we doso want to see you 
in it!” — “ General Stuart will certainly want to know how it fits —” 


BY THE OPEQUON 625 


“Please, sir,” — “‘ Gineral, Miss Anna sholy would like ter see you 
in hit!” 

Ten minutes elapsed while the Opequon rippled by and the 
crimson gum leaves drifted down, then somewhat bashfully 
from the tent came forth Stonewall Jackson metamorphosed. 
Triumph perched upon the helms of the staff and the visiting 
cavalry. “Oh!—Oh!—” “General Stuart will be so happy!” 
“General, the review this afternoon! General, won’t you review 
us that way?” 

He did. At first the men did not know him, then there mounted a 
wild excitement. Suppressed with difficulty during the actual evo- 
lutions, it burst into flower when the ranks were broken. The sun 
was setting in a flood of gold; there hung a fairy light over the green 
fields and the Opequon and the vivid woods. The place rang to the 
frolic shouting. It had the most delighted sound. “Stonewall! 
Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall! Stonewall! Old Jack! Old Jack! 
Old Jack!” 

Old Jack touched his beautiful hat of a lieutenant-general. 
Little Sorrel beneath him moved with a jerk of the head and a dis- 
tended nostril. The men noticed that, too. “He don’t know him 
either! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Ain’t life worth while? Ain’t it grand? 
one Stonewall! Stonewall!” 

On went the gold October, passing at last in a rain and drift of 
leaves into a russet November. The curls of wood smoke showed 
plainer down the glades, the crows were cawing, the migratory birds 
going south, but the days were yet mild and still, wrapped in a balm 
of pale sunshine, a faint, purplish, Indian summer haze. The 2d 
Corps was hale and soberly happy. 

It was the chaplain’s season. There occurred in the Army of 
Northern Virginia a religious revival, a far-spread and lasting deep- 
ening of feeling. For many nights in many forest glades there were 
“meetings” with prayer and singing. “Old Hundred” floated 
through the air. From tents and huts of boughs came the soldiers. 
They sat upon the earth, thick carpeted now with the faded leaves, 
or upon gnarled, out-cropping roots of oak and beech. Above shone 
the moon; there was a touch of frost in the air. The chaplam had 
some improvised pulpit; a great fire, or perhaps a torch fastened toa 
bough, gave light whereby to read the Book. The sound of the voice, 


~“ 


626 THE LONG ROLL 


the sound of the singing, blended with the voice of the Opequon 
rushing — all rushing toward the great Sea. 


““ Come, humble sinner, in whose breast 
A thousand thoughts revolve— ” 


It made a low thunder, so many soldiers’ voices. Always, on these 
nights, in some glade or meadow, with some regiment or other, there 
was found the commander of the 2d Corps. Beneath the cathedral 
roof of the forest, or beneath the stars in the open, sat Stonewall 
Jackson, worshipping the God of Battles. Undoubtedly he was 
really and deeply happy. His place is on the Judean hills, with Joab 
and David and Abner. Late in this November there came to him 
another joy. In North Carolina, where his wife had gone, a child was 
born to him, his only child, a daughter. 

In the first half of October had occurred Jeb Stuart’s brilliant 
Monocacy raid, two days and a half within McClellan’s lines. On 
the twenty-sixth McClellan began the passage of the Potomac. He 
crossed near Berlin, and Lee, assured now that the theatre of war 
would be east of the Blue Ridge, dispatched Longstreet with the rst 
Corps to Culpeper. On the seventh of November McClellan was 
removed from the command of the Army of the Potomac. It was 
given over to Burnside, and he took the Fredericksburg route to 
Richmond. 

The Army of the Potomac numbered one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand men and officers and three hundred and twenty guns. 
At Washington were in addition eighty thousand men, and up and 
down the Potomac twenty thousand more. The Army of Northern 
Virginia in all, rst and 2d Corps, had seventy-two thousand men 
and officers and two hundred and seventy-five guns. Lee called 
Stonewall Jackson to join Longstreet at Fredericksburg. 

On the twenty-second the 1st Corps quitted, amid smiles and 
tears,many a “God keep you!” and much cheering, Winchester the 
beloved. Out swung the long column upon the Valley pike. Advance 
and main and rear, horse and foot and guns, Stonewall Jackson and 
his twenty-five thousand took the old road. The men were happy. 
“Old road, old road, old road, howdy do! How’s your health, old 
lady? Have n’t you missed us? Have n’t you missed us? We’ve 
missed you! ” 


BY THE OPEQUON 627 


It was Indian summer, violet, dreamlike. By now there had been 
burning and harrowing in the Valley; war had laid his mailed hand 
upon the region. It was not yet the straining clutch of later days, 
but it was bad enough. The Indian summer wrapped with a soft 
touch of mourning purple much of desolation, much of untilled 
earth, and charred roof-tree, and broken walls. The air was soft 

‘and gentle, lying balmy and warm on the road and ragged fields, 
and the haze so hid the distances that the column thought not so 
much of how the land was scarred as of the memories that thronged 
on either side of the Valley pike. “Kernstown! The field of 
Kernstown. There’s Fulkerson’s wall. About five hundred years 
ago!” 

Stonewall Jackson, riding in the van, may be supposed to have 
had his memories, too. He did not express them. He was using 
expedition, and he sent back orders. ‘‘Press forward, men! 
Press forward.” He rode quietly, forage cap pulled low; or, 
standing with Little Sorrel on some wayside knoll, he watched 
for a while his thousands passing. Stuart’s gay present had 
taken the air but once. Here was the old familiar, weather-worn 
array, leaf brown from sun and wind and dust and rain, patched 
here and patched there, dull of buttons, and with the lace worn off. 
Here were the old boots, the sabre, the forage cap; here were the 
blue glint of the eye and the short ‘“‘ Good! good!” as the men passed. 
The marching men shouted for him. He nodded, and having noted 
whatever it was he had paused to note, shook Little Sorrel’s bridle 
and stiffly galloped to the van again. 

Past Newtown, past Middletown, on to Strasburg — the Massa- 
nuttons loomed sem all softly coloured yet with reds and golds. 
“‘Massanutton ! Massanutton!”’ said the troops. “We’ve seen you 
before, and you’ve seen us before! Front Royal’s at your head 
and Port Republic’s at your feet.”’ 

“In Virginia there ’s a Valley, 

Valley, Valley! 

Where all day the war drums beat, 
Beat, Beat! 

And the soldiers love the Valley 
Valley, Valley! 

And the Valley loves the soldiers, 
Soldiers, soldiers!” 


628 THE LONG ROLL 


Past Strasburg, past Tom’s Brook, past Rude’s Hill — through 
the still November days, in the Indian summer weather, the old 
Army of the Valley, the old Ewell’s Division, the Light Division, 
D. H. Hill’s Division, moved up the Valley Pike. All were now 
the 2d Corps, Stonewall Jackson riding at its head. The people — 
the people were mostly women and children — flocked to the great 
highroad to bring the army things, to wave it onward, to say 
“God bless you!’ —‘‘God keep you!” — “God make you to con- 
quer!” 

The 2d Corps passed Woodstock, and Edenburg, and Mt. 
Jackson, and came to New Market, and here it turned eastward. 
“Going to leave you,” chanted the troops. ‘Going to leave you, old 
road, old road! Take care of yourself till we come again!”’ 

Up and up and over Massanutton wound the 2d Corps. The 
air was still, not cold. The gold leaves drifted on the troops, and the 
red. From the top of the pass the view was magnificent. Down and 
down wound the column to the cold, swift Shenandoah. The men 
forded the stream. ‘‘Oh, Shenandoah! Oh, Shenandoah! when will 
‘we ford you again ?”’ 

Up and up the steeps of the Blue Ridge to Fisher’s Gap! All the 
air was dreamy, the sun sloping to the west, the crows cawing in the 
mountain clearings. The column was leaving the Valley, and a si- 
lence fell upon it. Stonewall Jackson rode ahead, on the mountain 
path, in the last gold light. At the summit of the pass there was a 
short halt. It went by in a strange quietness. The men turned and 
gazed. “The Valley of Virginia! The Valley of Virginia! Which 
of us will not see you again ?”’ 

The Alleghenies lay faint, faint, beneath the flooding light. The 
‘sun sent out great rays of purple and rose. Between the mountain 
ranges the vast landscape lay in shadow, though here and there 
a high hilltop, a mountain spur had a coronet of gold. The 2d 
Corps, twenty-five thousand men, high on the Blue Ridge, looked 
and looked. “Some of us will not see you again. Some of us will 
not see you again, O loved Valley of Virginia!” Column Forward! 
‘Column Forward | 


CHAPEL RX Ey 


THE LONE TREE HILL 


toward the house. Before them, crowning the low hill, 

showed the white pillars between oaks where the deep 
coloured leaves yet clung. The sun was down, the air violet, the 
negro children burning brush and leaves in the hollow behind the 
house quarter. Halfway to the pillars, there ran back from the drive 
a long double row of white chrysanthemums. The three sisters 
paused to gather some for the vases. 

Unity and Molly gathered them. Judith sat down on the bank by 
the road, thick with dead leaves. She drew her scarf about her. Molly 
came presently and sat beside her. “Dear Judith, dear Judith!” 
she said, in her soft little voice, and stroked her sister’s dress. 

Judith put her arm about her, and drew her close. “ Molly, is n’t. 
it as though the earth were dying? Just the kind of fading light 
and hush one thinks of going in —I don’t know why, but I don’t 
like chrysanthemums any more.” 

“T know,” said Molly, “there’s a feel of mould in them, and of 
dead leaves and chilly nights. But the soldiers are so used to lying 
out of doors! I don’t believe they mind it much, or they won’t until 
the snow comes. Judith —”’ 

“Yes, honey.” 

‘The soldiers that I have dreadful dreams about are the soldiers 
in prison. Judith, I dreamed about Major Stafford the other night! 
He had blood upon his forehead and he was walking up and down, 
walking up and down in a place with a grating.” 

“You must n’t dream so, Molly. — Oh, yes, yes, yes! I’m sorry 
for him. On the land and on the sea and for them that are in 
prison —”’ 

Unity joined them, with her arm full of white bloom. “Oh, is n’t 
there a dreadful hush? How gay we used to be, even at twilight! 
Judith, Judith, let us do something!” 


TT three beautiful Carys walked together from the road gate 


630 THE LONG ROLL 


Judith looked at her with a twisted smile. “This morning, very 
early, we went with Aunt Lucy over the storeroom and the smoke- 
house, and then we went down to the quarter and got them all to- 
gether, and told them how careful now we would all have to be with 
meal and bacon. And Susan’s baby had died in the night, and we 
had to comfort Susan, and this afternoon we buried the baby. After 
breakfast we scraped almost the last of the tablecloths into lint, 
and Molly made envelopes, and Daddy Ben and I talked about shoes 
and how we could make them at home. Then Aunt Lucy and I went 
into town to the hospitals. There is a rumour of smallpox, but Iam 
sure it is only a rumour. It has been a hard day. A number of sick 
were brought in from Fredericksburg. So much pneumonia! An old 
man and woman came up from North Carolina looking for their son. 
I took them through the wards. Oh, it was pitiful! No, he was not 
there. Probably he was killed. And Unity went to the sewing- 
rooms, and has been there sewing hard all day. And then we came 
home, and found Julius almost in tears, and Molly triumphant with 
the parlour carpet all up and ready to be cut into squares — sol- 
diers sleeping in the snowy winter under tulips and roses. And then 
we read father’s letter, and that was a comfort, a comfort! And 
then we took Susan’s little baby and buried it, and did what we 
could for Susan; and then we walked down to the gate and stopped 
to gather chrysanthemums. And now we are going back to the house, 
and I dare say there’ll be some work to do between now and bed- 
time. We’re doing something pretty nearly all the time, Unity.” 

Unity lifted with strength the mass of bloom above her head. “I 
know, I know! But it’s in me to want a brass band to do it by! 
I want to see the flag waving! I want to hear the sound of our work. 
Oh, I know I am talking foolishness!’’ She took Judith by the hands, 
and lifted her to her feet. ‘Anyhow, you ’re brave enough, Judith, 
Judith darling! Come, let us race to the house.”’ 

The three were country-bred, fleet of foot. They ran, swiftly, 
lightly, up the long drive. Twilight was around them, the leaves 
drifting down, the leaves crisp under foot. The tall white pillars 
gleamed before them; through the curtainless windows showed, 
jewel-like, the flame of a wood fire. They reached the steps almost 
together, soberly mounted them, and entered the hall. Miss Lucy 
called to them from the library. ‘‘The papers have come.” 


THE LONE TREE HILL 631 


The old room, quiet, grave, book-lined, stored with records of old 
struggles, lent itself with fitness to the papers nowadays. The Green- 
wood Carys sat about the wood fire, Judith in an old armchair, 
Unity on an old embroidered stool, Molly in the corner of a great 
old sofa. Miss Lucy pushed her chair into the ring of the lamplight 
and read aloud in her quick, low, vibrant voice. The army at Fred- 
ericksburg — that was what they thought of now, day and night. 
She read first of the army at Fredericksburg — of Lee on the south- 
ern side of the Rappahannock, and Burnside on the northern, and 
the cannon all planted, and of the women and children beginning to 
leave. She read all the official statements, all the rumours, all the 
guesses, all the prophecies of victory and the record of suffering. 
Then she read the news of elsewhere in the vast, beleaguered fortress 
— of the fighting on the Mississippi, in Louisiana, in Arkansas, in 
the Carolinas; echoes from Cumberland Gap, echoes from Corinth. 
She read all the Richmond news — hot criticism, hot defence of the 
President, of the Secretary of War, of the Secretary of State; echoes 
from the House, from the Senate; determined optimism as to foreign 
intervention; disdain, as determined, of Burnside’s “On to Rich- 
mond ”’; passionate devotion to the grey armies in the field — all the 
loud war song of the South, clear and defiant! She read everything 
in the paper. She read the market prices. Coffee $4 per lb. Tea 
$20 per lb. Wheat $5 per bushel. Corn $15 per barrel. Bacon $2 per 
Ib. Sugar $50 per loaf. Chickens $10. Turkeys $50. 

“Qh,” cried Molly. ‘We have chickens yet, beside what we send 
to the hospitals! And we have eggs and milk and butter, and I was 
looking at the turkeys to-day. I feel wicked!” 

“A lot of the turkeys will die,” said Unity consolingly. “They - 
always do. I spoke to Sam about the ducks and the guinea-hens the 
other day. I told him we were going to send them to Fredericksburg. 
He did n’t like it. ‘Miss Unity, what fer you gwine ter send all dem 
critturs away lak dat? You sen’ ’em from Greenwood, dey gwine 
die ob homesickness!’ And we don’t use many eggs ourselves, honey, 
and we’ve no way to send the milk.” 

Miss Lucy having read the paper through, the Greenwood ladies 
went to supper. That frugal meal over, they came back to the li- 
brary, the parlour looking somewhat desolate with the carpet up and 
rolled in one corner, waiting for the shears to-morrow. “The shep- 


632 THE LONG ROLL 


herds and shepherdesses look,” said Unity, “as though they were 
shivering a little. I don’t suppose they ever thought they ’d live to 
see a Wilton carpet cut into blankets for Carys and other soldiers 
gone to war! It’s impossible not to laugh when you think of 
Edward drawing one of those coverlets over him! Oh, me!” 

“Tf Edward gets a furlough this winter,” said Judith suddenly, 
“we must give hima party. With the two companies in town, 
and some of the surgeons, there will be men enough. Then Virginia 
and Nancy and Deb and Maria and Betty and Agatha and all the 
refugeeing girls — we could have a real party once more — ” 

“Just leaving out the things to eat,” said Unity; “and wearing 
very old clothes. We’ll do it, won’t we, Aunt Lucy ?” 

Aunt Lucy thought it an excellent idea. “We must n’t get old 
before our time! We must keep brightness about the place. I have 
seen my mother laugh and look all the gayer out of her beautiful 
black eyes when other folk would have been weeping! — I hear com- 
pany coming, now! It’s Cousin William, I think.” 

Cousin William it was, not gone to the war because of sixty-eight 
years and a rich inheritance of gout. He came in, ruddy as an apple, 
ridden over to cheer up the Greenwood folk and hear and tell news 
from the front. He had sons there himself, and a letter which he 
would read for the thirtieth time. When Judith had made him take 
the great armchair, and Miss Lucy had rung for Julius and a glass of 
wine, and Unity had trimmed the light, and Molly replenished the 
fire, he read, and as in these days no one ever read anything perfunc- 
torily, the reading was more telling than an actor could have made 
it. In places Cousin William himself and his hearers laughed, and 
in places reader and listener brushed hand across eyes. “ Your loving 
son,’ he read, and folded the sheets carefully, for they were becoming 
a little worn. “Now, what’s your news, Lucy? Have you heard 
from Fauquier ?”’ 

“Yes, yesterday. He has reached Fredericksburg from Winches- 
ter. It is one of his old, dry, charming letters, only — only a little 
hard to make out in places, because he’s not yet used to writing with 
his left hand.” Miss Lucy’s face worked for a moment; then she 
smiled again, with a certain high courage and sweetness, and taking 
the letter from her work-basket read it to Cousin William. He 
listened, nodding his head at intervals. “Yes, yes, to be sure, to be 


--- 


THE LONE TREE HILL 633 


sure! You can’t remember Uncle Edward Churchill, Lucy, but I 
can. He used to read Swift to me, though I did n’t care for it much, 
except for Gulliver. Fauquier reminds me of him often, except 
that Uncle Edward was bitter — though it wasn’t because of his. 
empty sleeve; it was for other things. — Fredericksburg! There ’ll 
be another terrible battle. And Warwick ?” 

“We heard from him to-day —a short letter, hurriedly written; 
but oh! like Warwick — like Warwick!” 

She read this, too. It was followed by a silence in the old Green- 
wood library. Then said Cousin William softly, “It is worth while to- 
get such letters. There aren’t many like Warwick Cary. He’s the 
kind that proves the future — shows it isn’t just a noble dream. 
And Edward ?” 

“A letter three days ago, just after you were here the last 
time.” 

The room smiled. “It was what Edward calls a screed,” said 
Molly; “there was n’t a thing about war in it.” 

Unity stirred the fire, making the sparks go up chimney. “Five 
pages about Massanutton in her autumn robes, and a sonnet to the 
Shenandoah! I like Edward.” 

At ten o’clock Cousin William rode away. The Greenwood women 
had prayers, and then, linked together, they went up the broad, old 
shallow stairs to the gallery above, and kissed one another good- 
night. 

In her own room Judith laid pine knots upon the brands. Up 
flared the light, and reddened all the pleasant chamber. She unclad 
herself, slipped on her dressing-gown, brushed and braided her dusky 
hair, rippling, long and thick, then fed again the fire, took letters 
from her rosewood box, and in the light from the hearth read them 
for the thousandth time. There was none from Richard Cleave after 
July, none, none! Sitting in a low chair that had been her mother’s, 
she bowed herself over the June-time letters, over the May-time 
letters. There had been but two months of bliss, two months! She 
read them again, although she had them all by heart; she held her 
hand as though it held a pen and traced the words so that she might 
feel, ‘‘ Here and so, his hand rested’; she put the paper to her cheek, 
against her lips; she slipped to her knees, laid her arms along the 
seat of the chair and her head upon them, and prayed. “O God! my 


634 THE LONG ROLL 


lover hast Thou put far from me. — O God! my lover hast Thou put 
far from me.” i 

She knelt there long; but at last she rose, laid the letters in the box, 
and took from another compartment Margaret Cleave’s. These 
were since July, a letter every fortnight. Judith read again the later 
ones, the ones of the late summer. “Dear child — dearest child, I 
cannot tell you! Only be forever sure that wherever he is, at Three 
Oaks or elsewhere, he loves you, loves you! No; I do not know that 
his is the course that I should take, but then women are different. 
I do not think I would ever think of pride or of the world and the 
world’s opinion. If you cried to me I would go, and the world should 
not hold me back. But men have been trained to uphold that kind of 
pride. I did not think that Richard had it, but I see now al! his 
father in him. Darling child, I do not think that it will last, but just 
now, oh, just now, you must possess your heart in patience!” 

The words blurred before Judith’s eyes. She sunk her head upon 
her knees. ‘‘ Possess my heart in patience — Possess my heart in 
patience — Oh, God, I am not old enough yet to do it!” 

She read another letter, one of later date. “Judith, I promised. 
I cannot tell you. But he is well, oh, believe that! and believe, too, 
that he is doing his work. He is not the kind to rest from work, he 
must work. And slowly, slowly that brings salvation. You are a 
noble woman. Be noble still — and wait awhile — and wait awhile! 
It will come right. Miriam is better. The woods about Three Oaks 
are gorgeous.” 

She read another. ‘Child, he is not at Three Oaks. Now you 
must rest — rest and wait.” 

Judith put the letters in the rosewood box. She arose, locked. her 
hands behind her head and walked softly up and down the room. 
“Rest—test and wait. Patience—quietude—tranquillity—strength 
— fortitude — endurance.— Rest — patience — calm quietude—”’ 

It worked but partially. Presently, when she lay down it was to 
lie still enough, but sleepless. Late in the night she slept, but it was 
to dream again, much as she had dreamed during the Seven Days, - 
great and tragic visions. Dawn waked her. She lay, staring at the 
white ceiling; then she arose. It was not cold. The earth lay still at 
this season, yet wrapped and warmed and softened with the memo- 
ries of summer. Judith looked out of the window. There was a glow 


THE LONE TREE HILL 635 


in the eastern sky, the trees were motionless, the brown path over 
the hills showed like a beckoning finger. She dressed, put a cloak 
about her, went softly downstairs and left the house. 

The path across the meadow, through the wood, up the lone tree 
hill — she would see the sunrise, she would get above the world. 
She walked quickly, lightly, through the dank stillness. There was 
mist in the meadow, above the little stream. The wood was shadowy; 
mist, like ghosts, between the trees. She passed through it and came 
out on the bare hillside, rising dome-like to the one tree with 
the bench around it. The eastern sky was burning gold. Judith 
stood still. There was a man seated upon the bench, on the side that 
overlooked Greenwood. He sat with his head buried in his hands. 
She could not yet tell, but she thought he was in uniform. 

With the thought she moved onward. She never remembered 
afterwards, whether she recognized him then, or whether she thought, 
“A soldier sleeping through the night up here! Why did he not 
come to the house?’”’ She made no noise on the bare, moist earth of 
the path. She was within thirty feet of the bench when Cleave lifted 
his head from his hands, rose, stood still a moment, then with a ges- 
ture, weary and determined, turned to descend the hill — on the side 
away from Greenwood, toward a cross-country road. She called to 
him. “Richard!” 

It was rapture — all beneath the rising sun forgotten save only 
this gold-lit hilltop, with its tree from Eden garden! But since it 
was earth, and Paradise not yet real, and there were checks and bars 
enough in their human lot, they came back from that seraph flight. 
This was the lone tree hill above Greenwood, and a November day, 
though gold-touched, and Philip Deaderick must get back to the sec- 
tion of Pelham’s artillery refitting at Gordonsville. — “What do 
you mean? You are a soldier — you are back in the army? — but 
you have another name? Oh, Richard, I see, I see! Oh, I might 
have known! A gunner with Pelham. Oh, my gunner with Pelham, 
why did you not come before ?”’ 

Cleave wrung her hands, clasped in his, then bent and kissed them. 
“Judith, I will speak to you as to a comrade, because you would be 
the truest comrade ever man had! What would you do — what 
would you have done — in my place? What would you do now, in 
my place, but say — but say, ‘I love you; let me go’?”’ 


636 THE LONG ROLL 


“T?” said Judith. “What would I have done? I would have re- 
entered the army as you have reéntered it. I would serve again as 
you are serving again. If it were necessary — Oh, I see that it was 
necessary! — I would serve disguised as you are disguised. But — 
but — when it came to Judith Cary — ”’ 

“Judith, say that it was not you and I, but some other disgraced 
soldier and one of your sisters — ”’ 

“Vou are not a disgraced soldier. The innocent cannot be dis- 
graced.” 

“Who knows that I was innocent ? My mother, and you, Judith, 
know it; my kinspeople and certain friends believe it; but all the rest 
of the country — the army, the people — they don’t believe it. Let 
my name be known to-morrow, and by evening a rougher dismissal 
than before! Do you not see, do you not see, Judith ?”’ 

“T see partly. I see that you must serve. I see that you walk with 
dangers. I see that — that you could not even write. I see that I 
must possess my soul in patience. I see that we must wait — Oh, 
God, it is all waiting, waiting, waiting! But I do not see — and I 
refuse to see, Richard — anything at the end of it all but love, hap- 
piness, union, home for you and me!” 

He held her close. “Judith, I do not know the right. I am not 
sure that I see the right, my soul is so tempest-tossed. That day at 
White Oak Swamp. If I could cleanse that day, bring it again into 
line with the other days of my life, poor and halting though they 
may have been, though they may be, if I could make all men say 
“His life was a whole — one life, not two. He had no twin, a disobe- 
dient soldier, a liar and betrayer, as it was said he had.’ — If I could 
do that, Judith! I do not see how I will do it, and yet it is my inten- 
tion to do it. That done, then, darling, darling! I will make true 
love to you. If it is not done — but I will not think of that. Only — 
only — how to do it, how to do it! That maddens me at times — ” 

“Ts it that? Then we must think of that. They are not all dead 
who could tell ? — ” 

“Maury Stafford is not dead.” 

“Maury Stafford! — What has he to do with it ?” 

Cleave laughed, a sound sufficiently grim. ‘‘What has he not to 
do with! it ? — with that order which he carried from General Jack- 
son to General Winder, and from General Winder — not, before 


THE LONE TREE HILL 637 


God! to me! Winder is dead, and the courier who could have toid is 
dead, and others whom I might have called are dead — dead, I will 
avow, because of my choice of action, though still — given that 
false order — I justity that choice! And now we hear that Major 
Stafford was among those taken prisoner at Sharpsburg.” 

Judith stood upright, her hand at her breast, her eyes narrowed. 
“Until this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never 
thought to ask. I never thought of the mistake lying there. The 
mistake! All these months I have thought of it as a mistake — as 
one of those misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incom- 
prehensible, that wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a 
lightning flash for what it was till now!” 

She looked about her, still with an intent and narrowed gaze. 
“The lone tree hill. It is a good place to see it from. There is 
nothing to be done but to join this day to a day last June — the day 
of Port Republic.” Raising her hands she pressed them to her eyes 
as though to shut out a veritable lightning glare, then dropped 
them. She stood very straight, young, slender, finely and strongly 
fibred. “He said he would do the worst he could, and he has done it. 
And I said, ‘At your peril!’ and at his peril it shall be! And the harm 
that he has done, he shall undo it!”” She turned. ‘‘ Richard! he shall 
undo it.” 

Cleave stood beside her. “Love, love! how beautiful the light is 
over Greenwood! I thought, sitting here, ‘I will not wait for the 
sunshine; I will go while all things are in shadow.’ And I turned to 
go. And then came the sunshine. I must go now — away from the 
sunshine. I had but an hour, and half of it was gone before the sun- 
shine came.” 

“How shall I know,” she said, “if you are living? There is a 
battle coming.” 

“Ves. Judith, I will not write to you. Do not ask me; I will not. 
But after each battle I have managed somehow to get a line to my 
mother. She will tell you that I am living, well and living. I do 
not think that I shall die — no, not till Maury Stafford and I have 
met again!” 

“He is in prison. They say so many die there. . . . Oh, Richard, 
wiite to me —’ 

But Cleave would not. “No! To do that is to say, ‘All is as it 


638 THE LONG ROLL 


was, and I let her take me with this stain!’ I will not —I will not. 
Circumstance has betrayed us here this hour. We could not help 
it, and it has been a glory, a dream. That is it, a dream. I will not 


{?? 


wake till I have said good-bye! 
They said good-bye, still in the dream, as lovers might, when one 


goes forth to battle and the other stays behind. He released her, 
turned short and sharp, and went down from the lone tree hill, down 
the side from Greenwood, to the country road. A piece of woods hid 
him from sight. 

Judith stood motionless for a time, then she sat orn upon the 
bench. She sat like a sibyl, elbows on knees, chin in hands, her gaze 
narrowed and fixed. She spoke aloud, and her voice was strange in 
her own ears. “Maury Stafford in prison. Where, and how long?” 


CHAPTER XLVI 


FREDERICKSBURG 


up and down the river, on the plain about the little city, on the 
bold heights of the northern shore, on the hills of the southern, 
commanding the plain. The snow was deep, but somewhat milder 
weather had set in. December the eleventh dawned still and foggy. 

General Burnside with a hundred and twenty thousand blue 
troops appointed this day to pass the Rappahannock, a stream that 
flowed across the road to Richmond. He had been responsible for 
choosing this route to the keep of the fortress, and he must make 
good his reiterated, genial assurances of success. The Rappahan- 
nock, Fredericksburg, and a line of hills masked the onward-going 
road and its sign, This way to Richmond. “Well, the Rappahan- 
nock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying the 
town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Staf- 
ford Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak 
and desolate with fir woods? — hares and snow birds are all the life 
over there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappa- 
hannock below Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jack- 
son’s down there. The balloon people say so. General Lee’s got an 
idea that Port Royal’s our point of attack. The mass of his army’s 
there. The gunboat people say so. Longstreet may be behind those 
hills. Well, we’ll crush Longstreet ! We’ll build our bridges under 
cover of this fortunate fog, and go over and defeat Longstreet and 
be far down the road to Richmond before a man can say Jack 
Robinson!” 

“Jack Robinson!” said the brigade from McLaws’s division — 
Barksdale’s Mississippians — drawn up on the water edge of 
Fredericksburg. They were tall men — Barksdale’s Mississippians 
— playful bear-hunters from the cane brakes, young and powerfully 
made, and deadly shots. “Old Barksdale” knew how to handle 
them, and together they were a handful for any enemy whatsoever. 


Se: lay deep on the banks of the Rappahannock, in the forest, 


640 THE LONG ROLL 


Sixteen hundred born hunters and fighters, they opened fire on the 
bridge-builders, trying to build four bridges, three above, one below 
the town. Barksdale’s men were somewhat sheltered by the houses 
on the river brink; the blue had the favourable fog with which 
to cover operations. It did not wholly help; the Mississippians 
had keen eyes; the rifles blazed, blazed, blazed! Burnside’s bridge- 
builders were gallant men; beaten back from the river they came 
again and again, but again and again the eyes of the swamp hunters 
ran along the gleaming barrels and a thousand bronzed fingers 
pulled a thousand triggers. Past the middle of the day the fog lifted. 
The town lay defined and helpless beneath a pallid sky. 

The artillery of the Army of the Potomac opened upon it. One 
hundred and forty heavy guns, set in tiers upon the heights to the 
north, fired each into Fredericksburg fifty rounds. Under that ter- 
rible cover the blue began to cross on pontoons. 

A number of the women and children had been sent from the town 
during the preceding days. Not all, however, were gone. Many 
had no place to go to; some were ill and some were nursing the ill; 
many had husbands, sons, brothers, there at hand in the Army of 
Northern Virginia and would not go. Now with the beginning of the 
bombardment they must go. There were grey, imperative orders. 
“At once! at once! Go where? God knows! but go.” 

They went, almost all, in the snow, beneath the pallid sky, with 
the shells shrieking behind them. They carried the children, they 
half carried the sick and the very old. They stumbled on, between 
the frozen hills by the dark pointed cedars, over the bare white 
fields. Behind them home was being destroyed; before them lay 
desolation, and all around was winter. They had perhaps thought it 
out, and were headed — the various forlorn lines — for this or that 
country house, but they looked lost, remnant of a world become 
glacial, whirled with suddenness into the sidereal cold, cold! and 
the loneliness of cold. The older children were very brave; but 
there were babes, too, and these wailed and wailed. Their wail- 
ing made a strange, futile sound beneath the thundering of the 
guns. 

One of these parties came through the snow to a swollen creek on 
which the ice cakes were floating. Cross! — yes, but how? The 
leaders consulted together, then went up the stream to find a possible 


FREDERICKSBURG 641 


ford, and came in sight of a grey battery, waiting among the hills. 
“Oh, soldiers! — oh, soldiers! — come and help!” 

Down hastened a detachment, eager, respectful, a lieutenant di- 
recting, the very battery horses looking anxious, responsible. A 
soldier in the saddle, a child in front, a child behind, the old steady 
horses planting their feet carefully in the icy rushing stream, over 
went the children. Then the women crossed, their hands resting on 
the grey-clad shoulders. All were over; all thanked the soldiers. 
The soldiers took off their caps, wished with all their hearts that 
they had at command fire-lit palaces and a banquet set! Having 
neither, being themselves without shelter or food and ordered not 
to build fires, they could only bare their heads and watch the 
other soldiers out of sight, carrying the children, half carrying the 
old and sick, stumbling through the snow, by the dark pointed 
cedars, and presently lost to view among the frozen hills. 

The shells rained destruction into Fredericksburg. Houses were 
battered and broken; houses were set on fire. Through the smoke 
and uproar, the explosions and detonations and tongues of flame, the 
Mississippians beat back another attempt at the bridges and opened 
fire on boat after boat now pushing from the northern shore. But 
the boats came bravely on, bravely manned; hundreds might be 
driven from the bridge-building, but other hundreds sprang to take 
their places — and always from the heights came the rain of iron, 
smashing, shivering, setting afire, tearing up the streets, bringing 
down the wails, ruining, wounding, slaying! McLaws sent an order 
to Barksdale, Barksdale gave it to his brigade. “Evacuate!” said 
the Mississippians. ‘‘We ’re going to evacuate. What’s that in 
English? ‘Quit?’ — What in hell should we quit for ?” 

Orders being orders, the disgust of the bear-hunters did not count. 
“Old Barksdale” was fairly deprecating. ‘Men, I can’t help it! 
General McLaws says, ‘General Barksdale, withdraw your men to 
Marye’s Hill.’ Well, I’ve got to do it, have n’t I? General McLaws 
knows, now does n’t he ? — Yes, — just one more round. Load! 
Kneel! Commence firing!” 

In the late afternoon the town was evacuated, Barksdale 
drawing off in good order across the stormed-upon open. He dis- 
appeared — the Mississippi brigade disappeared — from the Fed- 
eral vision. The blue column, the 28th Massachusetts leading, 


642 THE LONG ROLL 


entered Fredericksburg. ‘‘We’ll get them all to-morrow — Long- 
street certainly! Stonewall Jackson’s from twelve to eighteen miles 
down the river. Well! this time Lee will find that he’s divided his 
army once too often!” 

By dark there were built six bridges, but the main army rested 
all night on the northern bank. December the twelfth dawned, an- 
other foggy day. The fog held hour after hour, very slow, still, 
muffled weather, through which, corps by corps, all day long, the 
_army slowly crossed. In the afternoon there was a cavalry skir- 
mish with Stuart, but nothing else happened. Thirty-six hours 
had been consumed in crossing and resting. The Rappahannock, 
however, was crossed, and the road to Richmond stretched plain 
between the hills. 

But the grey army was not divided. Certain divisions had been 
down the river, but they were no longer down the river. The Army 
of Northern Virginia, a vibrant unit, intense, concentrated, gaunt, 
bronzed, and highly efficient, waited behind the hills south and west 
of the town. There was a creek running through a ravine, called 
Deep Run. On one side of Deep Run stood Longstreet and the rst 
Corps, on the other, almost at right angles, Stonewall Jackson and 
the 2d. Before both the heavily timbered ridge sank to the open 
plain. In the woods had been thrown up certain breastworks. 

Longstreet’s left, Anderson’s division, rested on the river. To 
Anderson’s right were posted McLaws, Pickett, and Hood. He had 
his artillery on Marye’s Hill and Willis Hill, and he had Ransom’s 
infantry in line at the base of these hills behind a stone wall. Across 
Deep Run, on the wooded hills between the ravine and the Mas- 
saponax, was Stonewall Jackson. A. P. Hill’s division with the 
brigades of Pender, Lane, Archer, Thomas, and Gregg made his 
first line of battle, the divisions of Taliaferro and Early his second, 
and D. H. Hill’s division his reserve. His artillery held all favour- 
able crests and headlands. Stuart’s cavalry and Stuart’s Horse 
Artillery were gathered by the Massaponax. Hills and forest hid 
them all, and over the plain and river rolled the fog. 

It hid the North as it hid the South. Burnside’s great force rested 
the night of the twelfth in and immediately about Fredericksburg — 
Hooker and Sumner and Franklin, one. hundred and thirteen thou- 
sand men. “The balloon people” now reported that the hills south 









































THE VEDETTE 


FREDERICKSBURG 643 


and west were held by a considerable rebel force — Longstreet 
evidently, Lee probably with him. Burnside repeated the infatua- 
tion of Pope and considered that Stonewall Jackson was absent from 
the field of operations. Undoubtedly he had been, but the shortest 
of time before, down the river by Port Royal. No one had seen him 
move. Jackson away, there was then only Longstreet — strongly 
posted, nodoubt. Well! Forma great line of battle, advance in over- 
whelming strength across the plain, the guns on Stafford Heights 
supporting, and take the hills, and Longstreet on them! It sounded 
simple. 

The fog, heavy, fleecy, white, persisted. The grey soldiers on the 
wooded hills, the grey artillery holding the bluff heads, the grey 
skirmishers holding embankment and cut of the Richmond, Freder- 
icksburg and Potomac Railroad, the grey cavalry by the Massa- 
ponax, all stared into the white sea and could discern nothing. The 
ear was of no avail. Sound came muffled, but still it came. “The 
long roll — hear the long roll! My Lord! How many drums have 
they got, anyway?”’ — “Listen! If you listen right hard you can 
hear them shouting orders! Hush up, you infantry, down there! 
We want to hear.” — “They’re moving guns, too! Wish there’d 
come a little sympathizing earthquake and help them — ’specially 
those siege guns on the heights over there!’’ — “‘ No, no! I want to 
fight them. Look! it’s lifting a little! the fog’s lifting a little! 
Look at the guns up in the air like that! It’s closed again.” — “ Well, 
if that was n’t fantastic! Ten iron guns in a row, posted in space!”’ 
— “Hm! brass bands. My Lord! there must be one to a pla- 
toon!’’ — “‘Hear them marching! Saw lightning once run along the 
ground — now it’s thunder. How many men has General Ambrose 
Everett Burnside got, anyhow ?”’ — “ Burnside’s been to dances be- 
fore in Fredericksburg! Some of the houses are burning now that 
he’s danced in, and some of the women he has danced with are 
wandering over the snow. I hope he ’ll like the reel presently.’’ — 
“He’s a good fellow himself, though not much of a general! He 
can’t help fighting here if he ’s put here to fight.’’ — “I know that. 
I was just stating facts. Hear that music, music, music!”’ 

Up from Deep Run, a little in the rear of the grey centre, rose a 
bold hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff 
behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the 


644 THE LONG ROLL 


left, Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants 
talked together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop 
above Deep Run. With suddennness the fog parted, was up- 
gathered with swiftness by the great golden sun. | 

That lifted curtain revealed a very great and martial picture, — 
War in a moment of vastness and grandeur, epic, sublime. The town 
was afire; smoke and flame went up to a sky not yet wholly azure, 
banded and barred with clouds from behind which the light came in 
rays fierce and bright, with an effect of threatening. There was a 
ruined house on a high hill. It gave the appearance of a grating 
in the firmament, a small dungeon grating. Beyond the burning 
town was the river, crossed now by six pontoon bridges. On 
each there were troops; one of the long sun rays caught the bayo- 
nets. From the river, to the north, rose the heights, and they had an 
iron crown from which already came lightnings and thunders. There 
were paths leading down to the river and these showed blue, moving 
streams, bright points which were flags moving with them. That for 
the far side of the Rappahannock, but on this side, over the plain 
that stretched south and west of the smoke-wreathed town, there 
moved a blue sea indeed. Eighty thousand men were on that plain. 
They moved here, they moved there, into battle formation, and 
they moved to the crash of music, to the horn and to the drum. The 
long rays that the sun was sending made a dazzle of bayonet steel, 
thousands and thousands and thousands of bayonets. The gleaming 
lines went here, went there, crossed, recrossed, formed angles, made 
a vast and glittering net. Out of it soared the flags, bright hovering 
birds, bright giant blossoms in the air. Batteries moved across the 
plain. Officers, couriers, galloped on fiery horses; some general 
officer passed from end to end of a forming line and was cheered. 
The earth shook to marching feet. The great brazen horns blared, 
the drums beat, the bugles rang. The gleaming net folded back on 
itself, made three pleats, made three great lines of battle. 

The grey leaders on the hill to the south gazed in silence. Then 
said Lee, “It is well that war is so terrible. Were it not so, we 
should grow too fond of it.” Longstreet, the “old war horse,” stared 
at the tremendous pageant. “This was n’t a little quarrel. It’s been 
brewing for seventy-five years —ever since the Bill-of-Rights day. 
Things that take so long in brewing can’t be cooled by a breath. It’s 


FREDERICKSBURG 645 


getting to be a huge war.”’ Said Jackson, ‘Franklin holds their 
left. He seems to be advancing. I will return to Hamilton’s Cross- 
ing, sir.’ 

The guns on the Stafford Heights which had been firing slowly 
and singly now opened mouth together. The tornado, overpassing 
river and plain, burst on the southern hills. In the midst of the 
tempest, Burnside ordered Franklin to advance a single division, 
its mission the seizing the unoccupied ridge east of Deep Run. 
Franklin sent Meade with forty-five hundred Pennsylvania troops. 

Meade’s brigades advanced in three lines, skirmishers out, a band 
playing a quickstep, the stormy sunlight deepening the colours, 
making a gleaming of bayonets. His first line crossed the Richmond 
road. To the left was a tiny stream, beyond it a ragged bank topped 
by brushwood. Suddenly, from this coppice, opened two of Pel- 
ham’s guns. 

Beneath that flanking fire the first blue line faltered, gave ground. 
Meade brought up four batteries and sent for others. All these 
came fiercely into action. When they got his range, Pelham moved 
his two guns and began again a raking fire. Again the blue gunners 
found the range and again he moved with deliberate swiftness, and 
again he opened with a hot and raking fire. One gun was disabled; 
he fought with the other. He fought until the limber chests were 
empty and there came an imperious message from Jeb Stuart, “Get 
back from destruction, you infernal, gallant fool, John Pelham!”’ 

The guns across the river and the blue field batteries steadily 
shelled for half an hour the heavily timbered slopes beyond the rail- 
road. Except for the crack and crash of severed boughs the wood 
gave nosign. At the end of this period Meade resumed his advance. 

On came the blue lines, staunch, determined troops, seasoned 
now as the grey were seasoned. They meant to take that empty 
line of hills, willy-nilly a few Confederate guns. That done, they 
would be in a position to flank Longstreet, already attacked in front 
by Sumner’s Grand Division. On they came, with a martial front, 
steady, swinging. Uninterrupted, they marched to within a few 
hundred yards of Prospect Hill. Suddenly the woods that loomed 
before them so dark and quiet blazed and rang. Fifty guns were 
within that cover, and the fifty cast their thunderbolts full against 
the dark blue line. From either side the grey artillery burst the grey 


646 THE LONG ROLL 


musketry, and above the crackling thunder rose the rebel yell. 
Stonewall Jackson was not down the river; Stonewall Jackson was 
here! Meade’s Pennsylvanians were gallant fighters; but they broke 
beneath that withering fire, — they fell back in strong disorder. 

Grey and blue, North and South, there were gathered upon and 
above the field of Fredericksburg four hundred guns. All came into 
action. Where earlier, there had been fog over*the plain, fog wreath- 
ing the hillsides, there was now smoke. Dark and rolling it invaded 
the ruined town, it mantled the flowing Rappahannock, it sur- 
mounted the hills. Red flashes pierced it, and over and under and 
through roared the enormous sound. There came reinforcements to 
Meade, division after division. In the meantime Sumner was hurl- 
ing brigades against Marye’s Hill and Longstreet was hurling them 
back again. 

The 2d Corps listened to the terrible musketry from this front. “Old 
Pete’s surely giving them hell! There’s a stone wall at the base of 
Marye’s Hill. McLaws and Ransom are holding it—sorry for the 
Yanks in front.” — “ Never heard such hullabaloo as the great guns 
are making!” — “ What’re them Pennsylvanians down there doing ? 
It’s time for them to come on! They’ve got enough reinforcements 
—old friends, Gibbon and Doubleday.” — “Good fighters.’’ — 
“Yes, Lord! we’re all good fighters now. Glad of it. Like to fight a 
good fighter. Feel real friendly toward him.” — “A thirty-two- 
pounder Parrott in the battery on the hill over there exploded and 
raised hell. General Lee standing right by. He just spoke on, calm 
and imperturbable, and Traveller looked sideways.’’ — “Look! 
Meade’s moving. Do you know, I think we ought to have occupied that 
tongue of land?” 

So, in sooth, thought others presently. It was a marshy, dense, and 
tangled coppice projecting like a sabre tooth between the brigades 
of Lane and Archer. So thick was the growth, so boggy the earth, 
that at the last it had been pronounced impenetrable and left un- 
razed. Now the mistake was paid for — in bloody coin. 

Meade’s line of battle rushed across the open, brushed the edge of 
the coppice, discovered that it was empty, and plunging in, found 
cover. The grey batteries could not reach them. Almost before the 
situation was realized, forth burst the blue from the thicket. Lane 
was flanked; in uproar and confusion the grey gave way. Meade 


FREDERICKSBURG 647 


sent in another brigade. It left the first to man-handle Lane, 
hurled itself on, and at the outskirt of the wood, struck Archer’s left, 
taking Archer by surprise and creating a demi-rout. A third brigade 
entered on the path of the first and second. The latter, leaving 
Archer to this new strength, hurled itself across the military road and 
upon a thick and tall wood held by Maxey Gregg and his South 
Carolinians. Smoke, cloud, and forest growth — it was hard to dis- 
tinguish colours, hard to tell just what was happening! Gregg 
thought that the smoke-wrapped line was Archer falling back. He 
withheld his fire. The line came on and in a moment, amid shouts, 
struck his right. A bullet brought down Gregg himself, mortally 
wounded. His troops broke, then rallied. A grey battery near 
Bernard’s Cabin brought its guns to bear upon Gibbon, trying to 
follow the blue triumphant rush. Archer reformed. Stonewall 
Jackson, standing on Prospect Hill, sent orders to his third line. 
“Generals Taliaferro and Early, advance and clear the front with 
bayonets.”’ 

Yaaatih! Yaaaitih! Yaaaathh! yelled Jubal Early’s men, and did 
as they were bid. Yaaaaiiih! Yaaitihhh! Yaaaatithhhh! yelled the 
Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Taliaferro’s, and did as they were 
bid. Back, back were borne Meade’s brigades. Darkness of smoke, 
denseness of forest growth, treachery of swampy soil! — all order 
was lost, and there came no support. Back went the blue — all who 
could go back. A. P. Hill’s second line was upon them now; Gibbon 
was attacked. The grey came down the long slopes like a torrent 
loosed. Walker’s guns joined in. The uproar was infernal. The blue 
fought well and desperately — but there was no support. Back they 
went, back across the Richmond Road — all who could get back. 
They left behind in the marshy coppice, and on the wooded slopes 
and by the embankment, four thousand dead and wounded. The 
Light Division, Taliaferro and Early, now held the railroad embank- 
ment. Before them was the open plain, and the backward surge to 
the river of the broken foe. It was three o’clock of the afternoon. 
Burnside sent an order to Franklin to attack again, but Franklin 
disobeyed. 

Upon the left Longstreet’s battle now swelled to giant propor- 
tions. Marye’s Hill, girdled by that stone wall, crowned by the 
Washington Artillery, loomed impregnable. Against it the North 


648 THE LONG ROLL 


tossed to destruction division after division. They marched across 
the bare and sullen plain, they charged; the hill flashed into fire, 
a thunder rolled, the smoke cloud deepened. When it lifted the 
charge was seen to be broken, retreating, the plain was seen to be 
strewed with dead. The blue soldiers were staunch and steadfast. 
They saw that their case was hapless, yet on they came across the 
shelterless plain. Ordered to charge, they charged; charged very 
gallantly, receded with a stubborn slowness. They were good 
fighters, worthy foes, and the grey at Fredericksburg hailed them as 
such. Forty thousand men charged Marye’s Hill — six great assaults 
—and: forty thousand were repulsed. The winter day closed in. 
Twelve thousand menin blue lay dead or wounded at the foot of the 
southern hills, before Longstreet on the left and Stonewall Jackson 
on the right. 

Five thousand was the grey loss. The Rockbridge Artillery had 
fought near the Horse Artillery by Hamilton’s Crossing. All day the 
guns had been doggedly at work; horses and drivers and gunners and 
guns and caissons; there was death and wounds and wreckage. In 
the wintry, late afternoon, when the battle thunders were lessening, 
Major John Pelham came by and looked at Rockbridge. Much of 
Rockbridge lay on the ground, the rest stood at the guns. ‘“ Why, 
boys,” said Pelham, “you stand killing better than any I ever 
saw!” 

They stood it well, both blue and grey. It was stern fighting at 
Fredericksburg, and grey and blue they fought it sternly and well. 
The afternoon closed in, cold and still, with a red sun yet veiled by 
drifts of crape-like smoke. The Army of the Potomac, torn, deci- 
mated, rested huddled in Fredericksburg and on the river banks. 
The Army of Northern Virginia rested with few or no camp-fires on 
the southern hills. Between the two foes stretched the freezing 
plain, and on the plain lay thick the Federal dead and wounded. 
They lay thick, thick, before the stone wall. At hand, full target for 
the fire of either force, was a small, white house. In the house lived ~ 
Mrs. Martha Stevens. She would not leave before the battle, 
though warned and warned again to do so. She said she had an idea 
that she could help. She stayed, and wounded men dragged them- 
selves or were dragged upon her little porch, and within her doors. 
General Cobb of Georgia died there; wherever a man could be laid 


FREDERICKSBURG 649 


there were stretched the ghastly wounded. Past the house shrieked 
the shells; bullets imbedded themselves in its walls. To. and fro 
went Martha Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till 
the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in 
the little meagre house — her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her 
poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When 
she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that 
far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be con- 
ceived of shell or minie. 

The sun sank, a red ball, staining the snow with red. The dark 
came rapidly, a very cold dark night, with myriads of stars. The 
smoke slowly cleared. The great, opposed forces lay on their arms, 
the one closely drawn by the river, the other on the southern hills. 
Between was the plain, and the plain was a place of drear sound — 
oh, of drear sound! Neither army showed any lights; for all its an- 
tagonist knew either might be feverishly, in the darkness, preparing 
an attack. Grey and blue, the guns yet dominated that wide and 
mournful level over which, to leap upon the other, either foe must 
pass. Grey and blue, there was little sleeping. It was too cold, and 
there was need for watchfulness, and the plain was too unhappy — 
the plain was too unhappy. 

The smoke vanished slowly from the air. The night lay sublimely 
still, fearfully clear and cold. About ten o’clock Nature provided a 
spectacle. The grey troops, huddled upon the hillsides, drew a 
quickened breath. A Florida regiment showed alarm. ‘“What’s 
that ? Look at that light in the sky! Great shafts of light streaming 
up — look! opening like a fan! What’s that, chaplain, what’s 
that ?— Don’t reckon the Lord’s tired of fighting, and it’s the 
Judgment Day?” 

“No, no, boys! It’s an aurora borealis.”’ 

“Say it over, please. Oh, northern lights! Well, we’ve heard 
of them before, but we never saw them. Having a lot of experiences 
here in Virginia! ’’ — “‘ Well, it’s beautiful, any way, and I think it’s 
terrible. I wish those northern lights would do something for the 
northern wounded down there. Nothing else that’s northern seems 
likely to do it.’”’—‘‘Look at them — look at them! pale red, and 
dancing! I’ve heard them called ‘the merry dancers.’ There’s a 
shooting star! They say that every time a star shoots some one 


650 THE LONG ROLL 


dies.”” — ‘“That’s not so. If it were, the whole sky would be full of 
falling stars to-night. Look at that red ray going up to the zenith. 
O God, make the plain stop groaning!”’ 

The display in the heavens continued, luminous rays, faintly 
rose-coloured, shifting from east to west, streaming upward until 
they were lost in the starry vault. Elsewhere the sky was dark, in- 
tensely clear, the winter stars like diamonds. There was no wind. 
The wide, unsheltered plain across which had stormed, across which 
had receded, the Federal charges, was sown thick with soldiers who 
had dropped from the ranks. Many and many lay still, dead and cold, 
their marchings and their tentings and their battles over. They 
had fought well; they had died; they lay here now stark and pale, 
but in the vast, pictured web of the whole their threads are strong 
and their colour holds. But on the plain of Fredericksburg many 
and many and many were not dead and resting. Hundreds and 
hundreds they lay, and could not rest for mortal anguish. They 
writhed and tossed, they dragged themselves a little way and fell 
again, they idly waved a hat or sword or empty hand for help, they 
cried for aid, they cried for water. Those who could not lift their 
voices moaned, moaned. Some had grown delirious, and upon that 
plain there was even laughter. All the various notes taken together 
blended into one long, dreary, weird, dull, and awful sound, steady 
as a wind in miles of frozen reeds. They were all blue soldiers, and 
they lay where they fell. 

There was a long fringe of them near the stone wall and near the 
railway embankment behind which now rested the Light Division 
and Taliaferro and Early. The wind here was loud, rattling a thicker 
growth of reeds. Above, the long, silent, flickering lights mocked 
with their rosy hue, and the glittering stars mocked, and the empty 
concave of the night mocked, and the sound of the Rappahannock 
mocked. A river moving by like the River of Death, and they could 
not even get to the river to drink, drink, drink... . 

A figure kneeling by a wounded man, spoke in a guarded voice to 
an upright, approaching form. ‘This man could be saved. I have 
given him water. I went myself to the general, and he said that if 
we could get any into the hospital behind the hill we might do so. 
But I’m not strong enough to lift him.” 

“T air,” said Billy. He set down the bucket that he carried. “I 


FREDERICKSBURG 651 


jest filled it from the creek. It don’t last any time, they air so thirsty! 
You take it, and I’ll take him.” He put his arms under the blue fig- 
ure, lifted it like a child, and moved away, noiseless in the darkness. 
Corbin Wood took the bucket and dipper. Presently it must be re- 
filled. By the creek he met an officer sent down from the hillside. 
“You twenty men out there have got to be very careful. If their 
sentries see or hear you moving you'll be thought a skirmish line 
with the whole of us behind, and every gun will be opening! Bat- 
tle’s decided on for to-morrow, not for to-night. — Now be careful, 
or we'll recall every damned life-in-your-hand blessed volunteer of 
you! — Oh, it’s a fighting chaplain ——I beg your pardon,I’m sure, 
sir! But you’d better all be very quiet. Old Jack would say that 
mercy’s all right, but you mustn’t alarm the foe.” 

All through the night there streamed the boreal lights. The living 
and the dying, the ruined town, the plain, the hills, the river lay be- 
neath. The blue army slept and waked, the grey army slept and 
waked. The general officers of both made little or no pretence at 
sleeping. Plans must be made, plans must be made, plans must be 
made. Stonewall Jackson, in his tent, laid himself down indeed 
for two hours and slept, guarded by Jim, like a man who was dead. 
At the end of that time he rose and asked for his horse. 

It was near dawn. He rode beneath the fading streamers, before 
his lines, before the Light Division and Early and Taliaferro, before 
his old brigade — the Stonewall. The 65th lay in a pine wood, 
down-sloping to a little stream. Reveille was yet tosound. The men 
lay in an uneasy sleep, but some of the officers were astir, and had 
been so all night. These, as Jackson checked Little Sorrel, came for- 
ward and saluted. He spoke to the colonel. ‘Colonel Erskine, 
your regiment did well. I saw it at the Crossing.” 

Erskine, a small, brave, fiery man, coloured with pleasure. “I’m 
very glad, sir. The regiment’s all right, sir. The old stock was n’t 
quite cut down, and it’s made the new like it—” He hesitated, then 
as the general with his “Good! good!” gathered up the reins he took 
heart of grace. “‘It’s old colonel, sir — it’s old colonel —”’ he stam- 
mered, then out it came: “ Richard Cleave trained us so, sir, that we 
could n’t go back!” 

“See, sir,’’ said Stonewall Jackson, “that you don’t emulate him 
in all things.” He looked sternly and he rode away with no other 


652 THE LONG ROLL 


word. He rode from the pine wood, crossed the Mine Road, and 
presently the narrow Massaponax. The streamers were gone from 
the sky; there was everywhere the hush of dawn. The courier with 
him wondered where he was going. They passed John Pelham’s 
guns, iron dark against the pallid sky. Presently they came to the 
Yerby House, where General Maxey Gregg, a gallant soldier and 
gentleman, lay dying. 

As Jackson dismounted Dr. Hunter McGuire came from the house. 
“T gave him your message, general. He is dying fast. It seemed to 
please him.” 

‘““Good!”’ said Jackson. “General Gregg and I have had a dis- 
agreement. In life it might have continued, but death lifts us all 
from under earthly displeasure. Will you ask him, Doctor, if I may 
pay him a little visit?” 

The visit paid, he came gravely forth, mounted and turned back 
toward headquarters on Prospect Hill. In the east were red streaks, 
one above another. The day was coming up, clear and cold. Pel- 
ham’s guns, crowning a little eminence, showed distinct against the 
colour. Stonewall Jackson rode by, and, with a face that was a 
study, a gunner named Deaderick watched him pass. 

All this day these two armies stood and faced each other. There 
was sharpshooting, there was skirmishing, but no full attack. Night 
came and passed, and another morning dawned. This day, forty- 
eight hours after battle, Burnside sent a flag of truce with a request 
that he be allowed to collect and bury his dead. There were few now 
alive upon that plain. The wind in the reeds had died to a ghostly 
hush. 

That night there came upa terrible storm, a howling wind driving 
a sleety rain. All night long, in cloud and blast and beating wet, the 
Army of the Potomac, grand division by grand division, recrossed 
the Rappahannock. 

The storm continued, the rain and snow swelled the river. The 
Army of the Potomac with Acquia creek at hand, Washington in 
touch, lay inactive, went into winter quarters. The Army of North- 
ern Virginia, couched on the southern hills, followed its example. 
Between the two foes flowed the dark river. Sentries in blue paced 
the one bank, sentries in grey the other. A detail of grey soldiers, 


FREDERICKSBURG 653 


resting an hour opposite Falmouth, employed their leisure in raising 
a tall sign-post, with a wide and long board for arms. In bold letters 
they painted upon it THIS WAY TO RICHMOND. It rested there, month 
after month, in view of the blue army. 

At the end of January Burnside was superseded. The Army of the 
Potomac came under the command of Fighting Joe Hooker. In 
February Longstreet, with the divisions of Pickett and Hood, 
marched away from the Rappahannock to the south bank of the 
James. In mid-March was fought the cavalry battle of Kelly’s 
Ford — Averell against Fitz Lee. Averell crossed, but when the 
battle rested, he was back upon the northern shore. At Kelly’s 
Ford fell John Pelham, “the battle-cry on his lips, and the light of 
victory beaming from his eye.” 

April came with soft skies and greening trees. North and south 
and east and west, there were now gathered against the fortress 
with the stars and bars above it some hundreds of thousands under 
arms. Likewise a great navy beat against the side which gave 
upon the sea. The fortress was under arms indeed, but she had no 
navy to speak of. Arkansas and Louisiana, Tennessee and North 
Carolina, vast lengths of the Mississippi River, Fortress Monroe in 
Virginia and Suffolk south of the James — entrance had been made 
into all these courts of the fortress. Blue forces held them stubbornly; 
smaller grey forces held as stubbornly the next bastion. On the 
Rappahannock and the Rapidan, within fifty miles of the imperilled 
Capital, were gathered by May one hundred and thirty thousand 
men in blue. Longstreet gone, there opposed them sixty-two thou- 
sand in grey. 

Late in April Fighting Joe Hooker put in motion “the finest army 
on the planet.’’ There were various passes and feints. Sedgwick at- 
tempted a crossing below Fredericksburg. Stonewall Jackson sent 
an aide to Lee with the information. Lee received it with a smile. 
“T thought it was time for one of you lazy young fellows to come 
and tell me what that firing was about! Tell your good general that 
he knows what to do with the enemy just as well as I do.” 

Flourish and passado executed, Hooker, with suddenness, moved 
up the Rappahannock, crossed at Richard’s Ford, moved up the 
Rapidan, crossed at Ely and Germanna Fords, turned east and 


654 THE LONG ROLL 


south and came into the Wilderness. He meant to pass through and, 
with three great columns, checkmate Lee at Fredericksburg. Before 
he could do so Lee shook himself free, left-to watch the Rappahan- 
nock, and Sedgwick, ten thousand pawns and an able knight, and 
himself crossed to the Wilderness. 


CTA tin NEVE 


THE WILDERNESS 


hin soil grew pine trees and pine trees, scrub oak and scrub 

oak. The growth was of the densest, mile after mile of dense 

growth. A few slight farms and clearings appeared like islands; all 

around them was the sea, the sea of tree and bush. It stretched 

here, it stretched there, it touched all horizons, vanishing beyond 
them in an amethyst haze. 

Several forest tracks traversed it, but they were narrow and worn, 
and it was hard to guess their presence, or to find it when guessed. 
There were, however, two fair roads — the old Turnpike and the 
Plank Road. These also were sunken in the thick, thick growth. A 
traveller upon them saw little save the fact that he had entered the 
Wilderness. Near the turnpike stood a small white church, the 
Tabernacle church. A little south of the heart of the place lay an 
old, old, abandoned iron furnace — Catherine Furnace. As much 
to the north rose a large old house — Chancellorsville. To the west- 
ward was Dowdall’s Tavern. Around all swept the pine and the 
scrub oak, just varied by other trees and blossoming shrubs. The 
ground was level, or only slightly rolling. Look where one might 
there was tree and bush, tree and bush, a sense of illimitable wood- 
land, of far horizons, of a not unhappy sameness, of stillness, of 
beauty far removed from picturesqueness, of vague, diffused charm, 
of silence, of sadness not too sad, of mystery not too baffling, of sun- 
shine very still and golden. A man knew he was in the Wilderness. 

Mayday here was softly bright enough, pure sunshine and pine 
odours, sky without clouds, gentle warmth, the wild azalea in bloom, 
here and there white stars of the dogwood showing, red birds singing, 
pine martens busy, too, with their courtship, pale butterflies flitting, 
the bee haunting the honeysuckle, the snake awakening. Beauty 
was everywhere, and in portions of the great forest, great as a prin- 
cipality, quiet. In these regions, indeed, the stillness might seem 


Pars by twenty miles stretched the Wilderness. Out of a 
t 


656 THE LONG ROLL 


doubled, reinforced, for from other stretches of the Wilderness, 
specifically from those which had for neighbour the roads, quiet had 
fled. 

To right and left of the Tabernacle church were breastworks, 
Anderson holding them against Hooker’s advance. In the early 
morning, through the dewy Wilderness, came from Fredericksburg 
way Stonewall Jackson and the 2d Corps, in addition Lafayette 
McLaws with his able Roman air and troops in hand. At the church 
they rested until eleven o’clock, then, gathering up Anderson, they 
plunged more deeply yet into the Wilderness. They moved in two 
columns, McLaws leading by the turnpike, Anderson in advance on 
the Plank Road, Jackson himself with the main body following by 
the latter road. 

Oh, bright-eyed, oh, bronzed and gaunt and ragged, oh, full of 
quips and cranks, of jest and song and courage, oh, endowed with all 
quaint humour, invested with all pathos, ennobled by vast struggle 
with vast adversity, oh, sufferers of all things, hero-fibred, grim 
fighters, oh, Army of Northern Virginia — all men and all women 
who have battled salute you, going into the Wilderness this May day 
with the red birds singing! 

On swing the two columns, long, easy, bayonets gleaming, 
accoutrements jingling, colours deep glowing in the sunshine. To 
either hand swept the Wilderness, great as a desert, green and jew- 
elled. In the desert to-day were other bands, great and hostile blue- 
clad bands. Grey and blue, — there came presently a clash that 
shook the forest and sent Quiet, a fugitive, to those deeper, distant 
haunts. Three bands of blue, three grey attacks — the air rocked 
and swung, the pure sunlight changed to murk, the birds and the 
beasts scampered far, the Wilderness filled with shouting. The blue 
gave back — gave back somewhat too easily. The grey followed — 
would have followed at height of speed, keen and shouting, but 
there rode to the front a leader on a sorrel nag. “General Anderson, 
halt your men. Throw out skirmishers and flanking parties and 
advance with caution.” 

McLaws on the turnpike had like orders. Through the Wilder- 
ness, through the gold afternoon, all went quietly. Sound of march- 
ing feet, beat of hoof, creak of leather, rumble of wheel, low-pitched 
orders were there, but no singing, laughing, talking. Skirmish- 


THE WILDERNESS 657 


ers and flanking parties were alert, but the men in the main 
column moved dreamily, the spell of the place upon them. With 
flowering thorn and dogwood and the purple smear of the Judas 
tree, with the faint gilt of the sunshine, and with wandering gracious 
odours, with its tangled endlessness and feel as of old time, its taste 
of sadness, its hint of patience, it was such a seven-leagues of wood- 
land as might have environed the hundred-years-asleep court, 
palace, and princess. The great dome of the sky sprung cloudless; 
there was no wind; all things seemed halted, as if they had been 
thus forever. The men almost nodded as they marched. 

Back, steadily, though slowly, gave the blue skirmishers before 
the grey skirmishers. So thickly grew the Wilderness that it was 
somewhat like Indian fighting, and no man saw a hundred yards in 
front of him. Stonewall Jackson’s eyes glinted under the forage cap; 
perhaps he saw more than a hundred yards ahead of him, but if so he 
saw with the eyes of the mind. He was moving very slowly, more 
like a tortoise than a thunderbolt. The men said that Old Jack had 
spring fever. 

Grey columns, grey artillery, grey flanking cavalry, all came 
under slant sunrays to within a mile or two of that old house called 
Chancellorsville set north of the pike, upon a low ridge in the Wil- 
derness. “Open ground in front—open ground in front — open 
ground in front! Let Old Jack by — Let Old Jack by! Going to 
see — Going to see—” Halt! 

The beat of feet ceased. The column waited, sunken in the green 
and gold and misty Wilderness where the shadows were lengthening 
and the birds were at evensong. In a moment the evensong was 
hushed and the birds flew away. The same instant brought expla- 
nation of that “Don’t-care.-On-the-whole-quite-ready-to-retreat.- 
Merely-following-instructions”’ attitude for the past two hours of 
the blue skirmish line. From Chancellorsville, from Hooker’s great 
entrenchments on the high roll of ground, along the road, and on the 
plateau of Hazel Grove, burst a raking artillery fire. The shells 
shrieked across the open, plunged into the wood, and exploded 
before every road-head. Hooker had guns a-many; they commanded 
the Wilderness rolling on three sides of the formidable position he 
had seized; they commanded in iron force the clearing along his 
front. He had breastworks; he had abattis. He had the r2th Corps, 


658 THE LONG ROLL 


the 2d, the 3d, the 5th, the 7th, the 11th; he had in the Wilderness 
seventy thousand men. His left almost touched the Rappahan- 
nock, his right stretched two miles toward Germanna Ford. He 
was in great strength. 

Jeb Stuart with his cavalry, waiting impatiently near Catherine 
Furnace, found beside him General Jackson on Little Sorrel. ‘‘Gen- 
eral Stuart, I wish you to ride with me to some point from which 
those guns can be enfiladed. Order Major Beckham forward with a 
battery.” 

This was the heart of the Wilderness. Thick, thick grew the trees 
and the all-entangling underbrush. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, 
staff behind them, pursued a span-wide bridle path, overarched by 
dogwood and Judas tree. It led at last to a rise of ground, covered 
by matted growth, towered above by a few pines. Four guns of the 
Horse Artillery strove, too, to reach the place. They made it at 
last, over and through the wild tangle, but so narrow was the clear- 
ing, made hurriedly to either side of the path, that but one gun at a 
time could be brought into position. Beckham, commanding now 
where Pelham had commanded, sent a shell singing against the not 
distant line of smoke and flame. The muzzle had hardly blazed 
when two masked batteries opened upon the rise of ground, the four 
guns, the artillerymen and artillery horses, and upon Stonewall 
Jackson, Stuart, and the staff. 

The great blue guns were firing at short range. A howling storm 
of shot and shell broke and continued. Through it camea curt order. 
“Major Beckham, get your guns back. General Stuart, gentlemen 
of the staff, push out of range through the underwood.”’ 

The guns with their maddened horses strove to turn, but the 
place was narrow. Ere the movement could be made there was bit- 
ter loss. Horses reared and fell, dreadfully hurt; men were mown 
down, falling beside their pieces. It was a moment requiring action 
decisive, desperately gallant, heroically intelligent. The Horse 
Artillery drew off their guns, even got their wounded out of the in- 
tolerable zone of fire. Stonewall Jackson, with Stuart, watched them 
do it. He nodded, “Good! good!” 

Out of the raking fire, back in the scrub and pine, there came to a 
halt near him a gun, a Howitzer. He sat Little Sorrel in the last 
golden light, a light that bathed also the piece and its gunners. The 


THE WILDERNESS 659 


Federal batteries were lessening fire. There was a sense of pause. 
The two foes had seen each other; now — Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia, Army of the Potomac—they must draw breath a little before 
they struck, before they clenched. The sun was setting; the cannon- 
ade ceased. 

Jackson sat very still in the gold patch where, between two pines, 
the west showed clear. The aureate light, streaming on, beat full 
upon the howitzer and on the living and unwounded of its men. 
Stonewall Jackson spoke to an aide. “Tell the captain of the battery 
that I should like to speak to him.” 

The captain came. “Captain, what is the name of the gunner 
there? The one by the limber with his head turned away.” 

The captain looked. ‘“ Deaderick, sir. Philip Deaderick.” 

“ Philip Deaderick. When did he volunteer?”’ 

The other considered. “I think, general, it was just before 
Sharpsburg. — It was just after the battle of Groveton, sir.” 

“‘Sharpsburg! — I remember now. So he rejoined at Manassas.”’ 

“He had n’t been in earlier, sir. He had an accident, he said. 
He’s a fine soldier, but he’s a silent kind of aman. He keeps to him- 
self. He won’t take promotion.” 

“Tell him to come here.” 

Deaderick came. The gold in this open place, before the clear 
west, was very light and fine. It illuminated. Also the place was a little 
withdrawn, no one very near, and by comparison with the tornado 
which had raged, the stillness seemed complete. The gunner stood 
before the general, quiet, steady-eyed, broad-browed. Stonewall 
Jackson, his gauntleted hands folded over the saddle bow, gazed 
upon him fully and long. The gold light held, and the hush of the 
place; in the distance, in the Wilderness, the birds began again 
their singing. At last Jackson spoke. ‘‘The army will rest to-night. 
Headquarters will be yonder, by the road. Report to me there at 
ten o’clock. I will listen to what you have to say. That is all now.”’ 

Night stole over the Wilderness, a night of large, mild stars, of 
vagrant airs, of balm and sweetness. Earth lay in a tender dream, 
all about her her wild flowers and her fresh-clad trees. The grey and 
the blue soldiers slept, too, and one dreamed of this and one dreamed 
of that. Alike they dreamed of home and country and cause, of 
loved women and loved children and of their comrades. Grey and 


660 THE LONG ROLL 


blue, these two armies fought each for an idea, and they fought well, 
as people fight who fight for an idea. And that it was not a material 
thing for which they fought, but a concept, lifted from them some- 
thing of the grossness of physical struggle, carried away as with a 
strong wind much of the pettiness of war, brought their strife upon 
the plane of heroes. There is a beauty and a strength in the thought 
of them, grey and blue, sleeping in the Wilderness, under the gleam 
of far-away worlds. | 

The generals did not sleep. In the Chancellor house, north of 
the pike, Fighting Joe Hooker held council with his commanders of 
corps, with Meade and Sickles and Slocum and Howard and Couch. 
Out in the Wilderness, near the Plank Road, with the light from a 
camp-fire turning to bronze and wine-red the young oak leaves 
about them, there held council Robert Edward Lee and Stonewall 
Jackson. Near them a war horse neighed; there came the tramp of 
the sentry, then quiet stole upon the scene. The staff was near at 
hand, but to-night staff and couriers held themselves stiller than still. 
There was something in the air of the Wilderness; they knew not 
what it was, but it was there. 

Lee and Jackson sat opposite each other, the one on a box, the 
other on a great fallen tree. On the earth between them lay an 
unrolled map, and now one took it up and pondered it, and now the 
other, and now they spoke together in quiet, low voices, their eyes 
on the map at their feet in the red light. Lee spoke. ‘I went myself 
and looked upon their left. It is very strong. An assault upon their 
centre? Well-nigh impossible! I sent Major Talcott and Captain 
Boswell again to reconnoitre. They report the front fairly impreg- 
nable, and I agree with them that it isso. The right— Here is 
General Stuart, now, to tell us something of that!” 

In fighting jacket and plume Jeb Stuart came into the light. He 
saluted. ‘General Lee, their right rests on the Brock road, and the 
Brock road is as clean of defences as if gunpowder had never been 
invented, nor breastworks thought of!”’ He knelt and took up the 
map. “Here, sir, is Hunting Creek, and here Dowdall’s Tavern and 
the Wilderness church, and here, through the deep woods, runs the 
old Furnace road, intersecting with the Brock road —” 

Lee and his great lieutenant looked and nodded, listening to his 
further report. ‘‘Thank you, General Stuart,” said at last the com- 





THE WILDERNESS 661 


mander-in-chief. ‘‘ You bring news upon which I think we may act. 
A flanking movement by the Furnace and Brock roads. It must be 
made with secrecy and in great strength and with rapidity. General 
Jackson, will you do it?” 

“Yes, sir. Turn his right and gain his rear. I shall have my 
entire command ?” 

“Yes, general. Generals McLaws and Anderson will remain with 
me, demonstrate against these people and divert their attention. 
When can you start?”’ 

“T will start at four, sir.” 

Lee rose. “Very good! Then we had better try to get a little 
sleep. I see Tom spreading my blanket now. — The Wilderness! 
General, do you remember, in Mexico, the Noche Triste trees and 
their great scarlet flowers? They grew all about the Church of our 
Lady of Remedies. — I don’t know why I think of them to-night. — 
Good-night! good-night!”’ 

A round of barren ground, towered over by pines, hedged in by 
the all-prevailing oak scrub, made the headquarters of the com- 
mander of the 2d Corps. Jim had built a fire, for the night wind was 
strengthening, blowing cool. He had not spared the pine boughs. 
The flames leaped and made the place ruddy as a jewel. Jackson 
entered, an aide behind him. “Find out if a soldier named Deader- 
ick is here.”’ 

The soldier named Deaderick appeared. Jackson nodded to the 
aide who withdrew, then crossing to the fire, he seated himself upon 
a log. It was late; far and wide the troops lay sleeping. A pale 
moon looked down; somewhere off in the distance an owl hooted. 
The Wilderness lay still as the men, then roused itself and whispered 
a little, then sank again into deathlike quiet. 

The two men, general and disgraced soldier, held themselves for a 
moment quiet as the Wilderness. Cleave knew most aspects of the 
man sitting on the log, in the gleam of the fire. He saw that to-night 
there was not the steel-like mood, cold, convinced, and stubborn, the 
wintry harshness, the granite hardness which Stonewall Jackson 
chiefly used toward offenders. He did not know what it was, but he 
thought that his general had softened. 

With the perception there came a change in himself. He had 
entered this ring in the Wilderness with a constriction of the heart, a 


662 THE LONG ROLL 


quick farewell to whatever in life he yet held dear, a farewell cer- 
tainly to the soldier’s life, to the army, to the guns, to the service of 
the country, an iron bracing of every nerve to meet an iron thrust. 
And now the thrust had not yet come, and the general looked at him 
quietly, as one well-meaning man looks at another who also means 
well. He had suffered much and long. Something rose into his 
throat, the muscles of his face worked slightly, he turned his head 
aside. Jackson waited another moment, — then, the other having 
recovered himself, spoke with quietness. 

“You did, at White Oak Swamp, take it upon yourself to act, 
although there existed in your mind a doubt as to whether your 
orders — the orders you say you received — would bear that con- 
struction? ”’ 

“Yes, general.” 

“And your action proved a wrong action?” 

“It proved a mistaken action, sir.”’ 

“Tt is the same thing. It entailed great loss with peril of greater.’’ 

“Yes, general.”’ 

“Had the brigade followed there might have ensued a general 
and disastrous engagement. The enemy were in force there — as J 
knew. Your action brought almost the destruction of your regiment. 
It brought the death of many brave men, and to a certain extent 
endangered the whole. That is so.” 

“Yes, general. It is so.’’ 

“Good! There was an order delivered to you. The man from 
whose lips you took it is dead. His reputation was that of a valiant, 
intelligent, and trustworthy man — hardly one to misrepeat an 
important order. That is so?” 

“It is entirely so, sir.” 

“Good! You say that he brought to you such and such an order, 
the order, in effect, which, even so, you improperly construed and 
improperly acted upon, an order, however, which was never sent by 
me. A soldier who was by testifies that it was that order. Well?”’ 

“That soldier, sir, was a known liar, with a known hatred to his 
officers.” 

“Yes. He repeated the order, word for word, as I sent it. How did 
that happen?” 

“Sir, I do not know.” 


THE WILDERNESS 663 


“The officer to whom I gave the order, and who, wrongly enough, 
transferred it to another messenger, swears that he gave it thus and 
4 tae 

“Yes, general. He swears it.” 

A silence reigned in the firelit ring. The red light showed form 
and feature clearly. Jackson sitting on the log, his large hands rest- 
ing on the sabre across his knees, was full within the glow. It beat 
even more strongly upon Cleave where he stood. ‘You believe,” 
said Jackson, “that he swore falsely?” | 

“Yes, general.”’ 

“Tt is a question between your veracity and his ?” 

“Yes, general.” 

“There was enmity between you ?” 

“Yes, general.” 

“Where is he now?” 

“He is somewhere in prison. He was taken at Sharpsburg.”’ 

There fell another silence. The sentry’s tread was heard, the 
crackle of the fire seizing upon pine cone and bough, a low, sighing 
wind in the wilderness. Jackson spoke briefly. ‘“‘After this cam- 
paign, if matters so arrange themselves, if the officer returns, if you 
think you can provide new evidence or re-present the old, I will for- 
ward, approved, your appeal for a court of inquiry.” 

“T thank you, sir, with all my heart.” 

Stonewall Jackson slightly changed his position on the log. Jim 
tiptoed into the ring and fed again the fire. There was a whinnying 
of some nearby battery horses, the sound of changing guard, then 
silence again in the Wilderness. Cleave stood, straight and still, 
beneath the other’s pondering, long, and steady gaze. An aide ap- 
peared at an opening in the scrub. ‘“‘General Fitzhugh Lee, sir.” 
Jackson rose. “You will return to your battery, Deaderick. — 
Bring General Lee here, captain.” 

The night passed, the dawn came, red bird and wren and robin 
began a cheeping in the Wilderness. A light mist was over the face 
of the earth; within it began a vast shadowy movement of shadowy 
troops. Silence was so strictly ordered that something approaching 
it was obtained. There was a certain eeriness in the hush in which 
the column was formed — the grey column in the grey dawn, in the 
Wilderness where the birds were cheeping, and the mist hung faint 


664 THE LONG ROLL 


and cold. By the roadside, on a little knoll set round with flowering 
dogwood, sat General Lee on grey Traveller. A swirl of mist below 
the two detached them from the wide earth and marching troops, 
made them like a piece of sculpture seen against the morning sky. 
Below them moved the column, noiseless as might be, enwound with 
mist. In the van were Fitzhugh Lee and the First Virginia Cavalry. 
They saluted; the commander-in-chief lifted his hat; they vanished 
by the Furnace road into the heart of the Wilderness. Rodes’s Divi- 
sion came next, Alabama troops. Rodes, a tall and handsome man, 
saluted; Alabama saluted. Regiment by regiment they passed into 
the flowering woods. Now came the Light Division beneath skies 
with a coral tinge. Ambrose Powell Hill saluted, and all his bri- 
gades, Virginia and South Carolina. The guns began to pass, quiet 
as was constitutionally possible. The very battery horses looked as 
though they understood that people who were going to turn the 
flank of a gigantic army in a strong position proceed upon the busi- 
ness without noise. Up rose the sun while the iron fighting men were 
yet going by. The level rays gilded all metal, gilded Traveller’s bit 
and bridle clasps, gilded the spur of Lee and his sword hilt and the 
stars upon his collar. The sun began to drink up the mist and all the 
birds sang loudly. The sky was cloudless, the low thick woodland 
divinely cool and sweet. Violet and bloodroot, dogwood and purple 
Judas tree were all bespangled, bespangled with dew. 

While the guns were yet quietly rumbling by Stonewall Jackson 
appeared upon the rising ground. He saluted. Lee put out his hand 
and clasped the other’s. ‘‘General, I feel every confidence! I am 
sure that you are going forth to victory.” 

“Yes, sir. I think that I am. —I will send a courier back every 
half hour.” 

“Yes, that is wise. — As soon as your wagons are by I will make 
disposition of the twelve thousand left with me. I propose a cer- 
tain display of artillery and a line of battle so formed as to deceive — 
and deceive greatly — as to its strength. If necessary we will skir- 
mish hotly throughout the day. I will create the impression that 
we are about to assault. It is imperative that they do not come be- 
tween us and cut the army in two.” | 

“T will march as rapidly as may be, sir. The Furnace road, the 
Brock road, then turn eastward on the Plank road and strike their 


THE WILDERNESS 665 


flank. Good!” He jerked his hand into the air. “I will go now, 
general.” 

Lee bent across again. The twoclasped hands. “God be with you, 
General Jackson!” 

“And with you, General Lee.”’ 

Little Sorrel left the hillock. The staff came up. Stonewall 
Jackson turned in his saddle, and, the staff following his action, 
raised his hand in salute to the figure on grey Traveller, above them 
in the sunlight. Lee lifted his hat, held it so. The others filed by, 
turned sharply southward, and were lost in the jewelled Wilderness. 

The sun cleared the tallest pines; there set in a splendid day. 
The long, long column, cavalry, Rodes’s Division, the Light Division, 
the artillery, ordnance wagons and ambulances, twenty-five thou- 
sand grey soldiers with Stonewall Jackson at their head — the long, 
long column wound through the Wilderness by narrow, hidden 
roads. Close came the scrub and pine and all the flowering trees of 
May. The horsemen put aside vine and bough, the pink honey- 
suckle brushed the gun wheels; long stretches of the road were grass- 
grown. Through the woods to the right, by paths nearer yet to the 
far-flung Federal front, paced ten guardian squadrons. All went 
silently, all went swiftly. In the Confederate service there were no 
automata. These thousands of lithe, bronzed, bright-eyed, tattered 
men knew that something, something, something was being done! 
Something important that they must all help Old Jack with. For- 
bidden to talk, they speculated inwardly. “South by west. ’T isn’t 
a Thoroughfare Gap march. They ’re all here in the Wilderness. 
We’re leaving their centre — their right’s somewhere over there in 
the brush. Should n’t wonder— Allan Gold, what’s the Latin for 
‘to flank’? — Lieutenant, we were just whispering! Yes, sir. — All 
right, sir. We won’t make no more noise than so many wet cart- 
ridges!” 

On they swung through the fairy forest, grey, steady, rapidly 
moving, the steel above their shoulders gleaming bright, the worn, 
shot-riddled colours like flowers amid the tender, all-enfolding green. 
The head of the column came to a dip in the Wilderness through 
which flowed a little creek. It was about nine o’clock in the morn- 
ing. All the men looked to the right, for they could see the plateau 
of Hazel Grove and the great Federal intrenchments. “If those fel- 


666 THE LONG ROLL 


lows look right hard they can see us, too! Can’t help it — march fast 
and get past.—Oh, that’s what the officers think, too! Double quick!” 

The column crossed the tiny vale. Beyond it the narrow road of 
bends and turns plunged due south. Now, General Birney, sta- 
tioned on the high level of Hazel Grove, observed, though somewhat 
faintly, that movement. He sent a courier to Hooker at Chancel- 
lorsville. ‘‘Rebel column seen to pass across my front. All arms 
and wagon train. It has turned to the southward.” 

“To the south!” said Hooker. “Turned southward. Now 
what does that mean? It might mean that Sedgwick at Fredericks- 
burg has seized and is holding the road to Richmond. It might 
mean that Lee contemplated an unobstructed retreat through this 
Wilderness section southward to Gordonsville, whichis not far away. 
From Gordonsville, he would fall back on Richmond. Say that is 
what he planned. Then, finding me in strength across his path, he 
would naturally make some demonstration, and behind it inaugurate 
a forced march, southward out of this wild place. A retreat to Gor- 
donsville. It’s the most probable move. I will send General Sickles 
toward Catherine Furnace to find out exactly.” 

Birney from Hazel Grove, Sickles from Chancellorsville, ad- 
vanced. At Catherine Furnace they found the 23d Georgia, and on 
both sides of the Plank road discovered Anderson’s division. Now 
began hot fighting in the Wilderness. The brigades of Anderson did 
gloriously. The 23d Georgia, surrounded at the Furnace, saw fall, in 
that square of the Wilderness, three hundred officers and men ; but 
those Georgians who yet stood did well, did well! Full in the front 
of Chancellorsville, McLaws, with his able, Roman air, his high 
colour, short black beard and crisp speech, handled his troops like a 
rightly trusted captain of Cesar’s. He kept the enemy’s attention 
strained in his direction. Standing yet upon the little hillock, in the 
midst of the flowering dogwood, a greater than McLaws overlooked 
and directed all the grey pieces upon the board before Chancellors- 
ville, played, all day, like a master, a skilfully complicated game. 

Far in the Wilderness, miles now to the westward, the rolling 
musketry came to the ears of Stonewall Jackson. He was riding 
with Rodes at the head of the column. ‘Good! good!” he said. 
“That musketry is at the Furnace. General Hooker will attempt 
to drive between me and General Lee.” 


THE WILDERNESS 667 


An aide of A. P. Hill’s approached at a gallop. He saluted, gained 
breath and spoke. ‘‘They’re cutting the 23d Georgia to pieces, sir! 
General Anderson is coming into action —”’ 

A deeper thunder rolling now through the Wilderness corrobor- 
ated his words. “Good! good!” said Jackson imperturbably. “My 
compliments to General Hill, and he will detach Archer’s and 
Thomas’s brigades and a battalion of artillery. They are to codperate 
with General Anderson and protect our rear. The remainder of the 
Light Division will continue the march.”’ 

On past the noon point swung light and shadow. On through the 
languorous May warmth travelled westward the long column. It 
went with marked rapidity, emphatic even for the “foot cavalry,” 
went without swerving, without straggling, went like a long, gleam- 
ing thunderbolt firmly held and swung. Behind it, sank in the dis- 
tance the noise of battle. The Army of Northern Virginia knew 
itself divided, cut in two. Far back in the flowering woods before 
Chancellorsville, the man on the grey horse, directing here, directing 
there his twelve thousand men, played his master game with equa- 
nimity, trusting in Stonewall Jackson rushing toward the Federal 
right. Westward in the Wilderness, swiftly nearing the Brock 
road, the man on the sorrel nag travelled with no backward look. In 
his right hand was the thunderbolt, and near at hand the place 
from which to hurl it. He rode like incarnate Intention. The 
officer beside him said something as to that enormous peril in 
the rear, driving like a wedge between this hurrying column and 
the grey twelve thousand before Chancellorsville. ‘Yes, sir, yes!” 
said Jackson. “But I trust first in God, and then in General 
lee” 

The infantry swung into the Brock road. It ran northward; it 
lay bare, sunny, sleepy, walled in by emerald leaves and white and 
purple bloom. The grey thunderbolt travelled fast, fast, and at 
three o’clock its head reached the Plank road. Far to the east, in the 
Wilderness, the noise of the battle yet rolled, but it came fainter, 
with a diminishing sound. Anderson, Thomas, and Archer had 
driven back Sickles. There was a pause by Chancellorsville and 
Catherine Furnace. Through it and all the while the man on grey 
Traveller kept with a skill so exquisite that it shaded into a grave 
simplicity those thousands and thousands and thousands of hostile 


668 THE LONG ROLL 


eyes turned quite from their real danger, centred only on a finely 
painted mask of danger. 

At the intersection of the Brock and the Plank roads, Stonewall 
Jackson found massed the 1st Virginia cavalry. Upon the road and 
to either side in the flowering woods, roan and bay and black tossed 
their heads and moved their limbs amid silver dogwood and rose 
azalea. The horses chafed, the horsemen looked at once anxious and 
exultant. Fitzhugh Lee met the general in command. The latter 
spoke. “Three o’clock. Proceed at once, general, down the Plank 
road.”’ 

“T beg, sir,” said the other, ‘“‘that you will ride with me to the top 
of this roll of ground in front of us. I can show you the strangest 
thing!” 

The two went, attended only by a courier. The slight eminence, 
all clad with scrub-oak, all carpeted with wild flowers, was reached. 
The horsemen turned and looked eastward, the breast-high scrub, 
the few tender-foliaged young trees sheltering them from view. They 
looked eastward, and in the distance they saw Dowdall’s Tavern. 
But it was not Dowdall’s Tavern that was the strangest thing. The 
strangest thing was nearer than Dowdall’s; it was at no great dis- 
tance at all. It was a long abattis, and behind the abattis long, well- 
builded breastworks. Behind the breastworks, overlooked by the 
little hill, and occupying an old clearing in the Wilderness, was a 
large encampment —the encampment, in short, of the 11th Army 
Corps, Howard commanding, twenty regiments, and six batteries. 
From the little hill where the violets purpled the ground, Stone- 
wall Jackson and the cavalry leader looked and looked in silence. 
The blue soldiers lay at ease on the tender sward. It was dolce 
far niente in the Wilderness. The arms were stacked, the arms 
were stacked. There were cannon planted by the roadside, but 
where were the cannoneers? Not very near the guns, but asleep on 
the grass, or propped against trees smoking excellent tobacco, or in 
the square on the greensward playing cards with laughter! Battery 
horses were grazing where they would. Far and wide were scattered 
the infantry, squandered like plums on the grass. They lay or strolled 
about in the slant sunshine, in the balmy air, in the magic Wilder- 
ness — they never even glanced toward the stacked arms. 

On the flowery slope across the road, Stonewall Jackson sat Little 


THE WILDERNESS 669 


Sorrel and gazed upon the pleasant, drowsy scene. His eyes had a 
glow, his cheek a warm colour beneath the bronze. Staff, and indeed 
the entire 2d Corps, had remarked from time to time this spring upon 
Old Jack’s evident good health. “Getting younger all the time! 
This war climate suits him. Time the peace articles are signed 
he’ll be just a boy again! Arrived at — what do you call it ? peren- 
nial youth.”” Now he and Little Sorrel stood upon the flowering 
hilltop, and his lips moved. “Old Jack’s praying — Old Jack’s 
praying!” thought the courier. 

Fitz Lee said something, but the general did not attend. In another 
moment, however, he spoke curt, decisive, final. He spoke to the 
courier. ‘‘Tell General Rodes to move across the Plank road. He is 
to halt at the turnpike. I will join him there. Move quietly.” 

The courier turned and went. Stonewall Jackson regarded again 
the scene before him — abattis and breastworks and rifle-pits un- 
tenanted, guns lonely in the slanting sunlight, lines of stacked arms, 
tents, fluttering flags, the horses straying at their will, cropping 
the tender grass, in a corner of a field men butchering beeves — 
regarded the German regiments, Schimmelpfennig and Krzyzancer- 
ski, regarded New York and Wisconsin, camped about the Wilder- 
ness church. Up from the clearing, across to the thick forest, floated 
an indescribable humming sound, a confused droning as from a 
giant race of bees. The shadows of the trees were growing long, the 
sun hung just above the pines of the Wilderness. ‘Good! good!”’ 
said Stonewall Jackson. His eyes, beneath the old, old forage cap, 
had a sapphire depth and gleam. A colour was in his cheek. “‘Good! 
good!” he said, and jerked his hand into the air. Suddenly turning 
Little Sorrel, he left the hill — riding fast, elbows out, and big feet, 
down into the woods, his sabre leaping as he rode. 


CHAPTER XLVIII 


THE RIVER 


formed. Only the tree-tops of the Wilderness now were in gold, 

below, in the thick wood, the brigades stood in shadow. In front 
were Rodes’s skirmishers, and Rodes’s brigades formed the first line. 
The troops of Raleigh Colston made the second line, A. P. Hill’s men 
the third. A battery — four Napoleons — was advanced; the other 
guns were coming up. The cavalry, the Stonewali Brigade support- 
ing, took the Plank road, masking the actual movement. On the 
old turnpike Stonewall Jackson sat his horse beside Rodes. At six 
o’clock he looked at his watch, closed it, and put it in his pocket. 
“Are you ready, General Rodes?”’ 

 6S.5516.7. 

“You can go forward, sir.” 

High over the darkening Wilderness rang a bugle-call. The sound 
soared, hung a moment poised, then, far and near, thronged the 
grey echoes, bugles, bugles, calling, calling! The sound passed 
away; there followed a rush of bodies through the Wilderness; in a 
moment was heard the crackling fire of the skirmishers. From ahead 
came a wild beating of Federal drums — the long roll, the long roll! 
Boom! Into action came the grey guns. Rodes’s Alabamians passed 
the abattis, touched the breastworks, Colston two hundred yards 
behind, A. P. Hill the third line. Yaaai! Yaaaitih! Yaaaaaitihh! 
rang the Wilderness. 

Several miles to the eastward the large aid house of Chancellors- 
ville, set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly win- 
dows. All about it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the 
vivid skies. It lay like a sea, touching all the horizon. On the deep 
porch of the house, tasting the evening coolness, sat Fighting Joe 
Hooker and several of his officers. Eastward there was firing, as 
there had been all day, but it, too, was decreased in volume, broken 
in continuity. The main rebel body, thought the Federal general, 


I yet lacked of six o’clock when the battle lines were finally 


THE RIVER 671 


must be about ready to draw off, follow the rebel advance in its 
desperate attempt to get out of the Wilderness, to get off southward 
to Gordonsville. The 12th Corps was facing the “main body.” 
The interchange of musketry, eastward there, had a desultory, 
waiting sound. From the south, several miles in the depth of the 
Wilderness, came a slow, interrupted booming of cannon. Plea- 
santon and Sickles were down there, somewhere beyond Catherine 
Furnace. Pleasanton and Sickles were giving chase to the rebel 
detachment, — whatever it was; Stonewall Jackson and a division 
probably — that was trying to get out of the Wilderness. Atany 
rate, the rebel force was divided. When morning dawned it should 
be pounded small, piece by piece, by the blue impact! ‘‘We’ve got 
the men, and we’ve got the guns. We’ve got the finest army on the 
planet!” 

The sun dropped. The Wilderness rolled like a sea, hiding many 
things. The shaggy pile of the forest turned from green to violet. 
It swept to the pale northern skies, to the eastern, reflecting light. 
from the opposite quarter, to the southern, to the splendid west. 
Wave after wave, purple-hued, velvet-soft, it passed into mist 
beneath the skies. There was a perception of a vastness not com- 
prehended. One of the men upon the Chancellor porch cleared his 
throat. ‘‘There’s an awful feeling about this place! It’s poetic, I 
suppose. Anyhow, it makes you feel that anything might happen — 
the stranger it was, the likelier to happen —” 

“T don’t feel that way. It’s just a great big rolling plain with 
woods upon it — no mountains or water —”’ 

“Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to 
happen I would n’t choose a chopped up, picturesque place to hap- 
pen in! I’d choose something like this. I —”’ 

“What’s that?” 

Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! 

Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up andcame 
across. “‘ Due west! — Howard’s guns? — What does that mean —”’ 

Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! 

Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. “Bring my horse, 
quick! Colonel, go down to the road and see —”’ 

“My God! Here they come!” 

Down the Plank road, through the woods, back to Chancellors- 


672 THE LONG ROLL 


ville, rushed the routed 21st Corps. Soldiers and ambulances, 
wagons and cattle, gunners lacking their guns, companies out of 
regiments, squads out of companies, panic-struck and flying units, 
shouting officers brandishing swords, horsemen, colour - bearers 
without colours, others with colours desperately saved, musicians, 
sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons with tearing, maddened 
horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers — down, back to the centre 
at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn, churned to foam, 
lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall — back on the 
centre roared and fell the flanked right! Down the Plank road, out 
of the dark woods of the Wilderness, out of the rolling musketry, 
behind it the cannon thunder, burst a sound, a sound, a known 
sound! Yaaaai! Yaaaaaiith! Yaaiiu! Yaaaaitihhhhh! It echoed, 
it echoed from the east of Chancellorsville! Yaath! Yaaaaiuh! 
Yaaaaaaaithh! yelled the troops of McLaws and Anderson. “‘Open 
fire!”’ said Lee to his artillery; and to McLaws, “ Move up the turn- 
pike and attack.” 

The Wilderness of Spottsylvania laid aside her mantle of calm. 
She became a menad, intoxicated, furious, shrieking, a giantess in 
action, a wild handmaid drinking blood, a servant of Ares, a Titanic 
hostess spreading with lavish hands large ground for armies and 
battles, a Valkyrie gathering the dead, laying them in the woodland 
hollows amid bloodroot and violets! She chanted, she swayed, she 
cried aloud to the stars, and she shook her own madness upon the 
troops, very impartially, on grey and on blue. 

Down the Plank road, in the gathering night, the very fulness of 
the grey victory brought its difficulties. Brigades were far ahead, 
separated from their-division commanders; regiments astray from 
their brigadiers, companies struggling in the dusk through the 
thickets, seeking the thread from which in the onset and uproar the 
beads had slipped. They lost themselves in the wild place; there 
came perforce a pause, a quest for organization and alignment, a 
drawing together, a compressing of the particles of the thunderbolt; 
then, then would it be hurled again, full against Chancellors- 
ville! 

The moon was coming up. She silvered the Wilderness about 
Dowdall’s Tavern. She made a pallor around the group of staff 
and field officers gathered beside the road. Her light glinted on 


THE RIVER 673 


Stonewall Jackson’s sabre, and on the worn braid of the old forage 
cap. A body of cavalry passed on its way to Ely’s Ford. Jeb Stuart 
rode at the head. He was singing. ‘“‘Old Joe Hooker, won’t you come 
out of the Wilderness?” he sang. An officer of Rodes came up. 
““General Rodes reports, sir, that he has taken a line of their en- 
trenchments. He’s less than a mile from Chancellorsville.” 

“Good! Tell him A. P. Hill will support. As you go, tell the 
troops that I wish them to get into line and preserve their order.”’ 

The officer went. An aide of Colston’s appeared, breathless from 
a struggle through the thickets. “From General Colston, sir. He’s 
immediately behind General Rodes. There was a wide abattis. The 
troops are re-forming beyond it. We see no Federals between us and 
Chancellorsville.”’ 

“Good! Tell General Colston to use expedition and get his men 
into line. Those guns are opening without orders!” 

Three grey cannon, planted within bowshot of the Chancellor 
House, opened, indeed, and with vigour, — opened against twenty- 
two guns in epaulements on the Chancellorsville ridge. The twenty- 
two answered in a roar of sound, overtowering the cannonade to the 
east of McLaws and Anderson. The Wilderness resounded; smoke 
began to rise like the smoke of strange sacrifices; the mood of the 
place changed to frenzy. She swung herself, she chanted. 

“ Grey or blue, 
I care not, I! 
Blue and grey 
Are here to die! 
This human brood 
Is stained with blood. 
The armed man dies, 
See where he lies 
In my arms asleep! 
On my breast asleep! 
The babe of Time, 
A nestling fallen. 
The nest a ruin, 
The tree storm-snapped. 
Lullaby, lullaby! sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep! ’’ 


The smoke drifted toward the moon, the red gun-flashes showed 
the aisles of pine and oak. Jackson beckoned imperiously to an aide. 
“Go tell A. P. Hill to press forward.” 


674 THE LONG ROLL 


The thunder of the guns ceased suddenly. There was heard a 
tramp of feet, A. P. Hill’s brigades on the turnpike. “Who leads?” 
asked a voice. ‘‘Lane’s North Carolinians,’”’ answered another. 
General Lane came by, young, an old V. M. I. cadet. He drew rein 
a moment, saluted. “Push right ahead, Lane! right ahead!” said 
Jackson. : 

A. P. Hill, in his battle shirt, appeared, his staff behind him. 
“Your final order, general ?”’ 3 

“Press them, Hill! Cut them off from the fords. Press them!”’ 

A. P. Hill went. From the east, the guns upon his own front now 
having quieted, rolled the thunder of those with Lee. The clamour 
about Chancellorsville where, in hot haste, Hooker made disposi- 
tions, streamed east and west, meeting and blending with, westward, 
a like distraction of forming commands, of battle lines made in the 
darkness, among thickets. The moon was high, but not observed; 
the Wilderness fiercely chanting. Behind him Captain Wi!bourne 
of the Signal Corps, two aides and several couriers, Jackson rode 
along the Plank road. 

There was a regiment drawn across this way through the Wilder- 
ness, on the road and in the woods on either hand. In places in the 
Wilderness, the scrub that fearfully burned the next day and the 
next was even now afire, and gave, though uncertainly and dimly, a 
certain illumination. By it the regiment was perceived. It seemed 
composed of tall and shadowy men. ‘What troops are these?” 
asked the general. 

“Lane’s North Carolinians, sir, —the 18th.” 

As he passed, the regiment started to cheer. He shook his head. 
“Don’t, men! We want quiet now.” 

A very few hundred yards from Chancellorsville he checked Little 
Sorrel. The horse stood, fore feet planted. Horse and rider, they 
stood and listened. Hooker’s reserves were up. About the Chan- 
cellor House, on the Chancellorsville ridge, they were throwing up 
entrenchments. They were digging the earth with bayonets, they 
were heaping it up with their hands. There was a ringing of axes. 
They were cutting down the young spring growth; they were making 
an abattis. Tones of command could be heard. “Hurry! hurry — 
hurry! They mean to rush us. Hurry — hurry!” A dead creeper 
mantling a dead tree, caught by some flying spark, suddenly flared 


THE RIVER 675 


throughout its length, stood a pillar of fire, and showed redly the 
enemy’s guns. Stonewall Jackson sat his horse and looked. “Cut 
them off from the ford,” he said. “Never let them get out of Vir- 
ginia.”” He jerked his hand into the air. 

Turning Little Sorrel, he rode back along the Plank road toward 
his own lines. The light of the burning brush had sunken. The can- 
non smoke floating in the air, the very thick woods, made all things 
obscure. 

“There are troops across the road in front,”’ said an aide. 

“Yes. Lane’s North Carolinians awaiting their signal.”’ 

A little to the east and south broke out in the Wilderness a sud- 
den rattling fire, sinking, rising, sinking again, the blue and grey 
skirmishers now in touch. All through the vast, dark, tangled beat- 
ing heart of the place,sprang into being a tension. The grey lines 
listened for the word Advance! The musket rested on the shoulder, 
the foot quivered, eyes front tried to pierce the darkness. Sound 
was unceasing; and yet the mind found a stillness, a lake of calm. 
It was the moment before the moment. 

Stonewall Jackson came toward the Carolinians. He rode quickly, 
past the dark shell of a house sunken among pines. There were with 
him seven or eight persons. The horses’ hoofs made a trampling on 
the Plank road. The woods were deep, the obscurity great. Suddenly 
out of the brush rang a shot, an accidentally discharged rifle. 
Some grey soldier among Lane’s tensely waiting ranks, dressed in the 
woods to the right of the road, spoke from the core of a fearful dream: 
“Yankee cavalry!” 

“Fire!” called an officer of the 18th North Carolina. 

The volley, striking diagonally across the road, emptied several 
saddles. Stonewall Jackson, the aides and Wilbourne, wheeled to 
the left, dug spur, and would have plunged into the wood. “ Fire!”’ 
said the Carolinians, dressed to the left of the road, and fired. 

Little Sorrel, maddened, dashed into the wood. An oak bough 
struck his rider, almost bearing him from the saddle. With his right 
hand from which the blood was streaming, in which a bullet was 
imbedded, he caught the bridle, managed to turn the agonized brute 
into the road again. There seemed a wild sound, a confusion of 
voices. Some one had stopped the firing. “My God, men! You 
are firing into us/”’ In the road were the aides. They caught the 


676 THE LONG ROLL 


rein, stopped the horse. Wilbourne put up his arms. ‘General, 
general! you are not hurt ? — Hold there! — Morrison — Leigh! — ” 

They laid him on the ground beneath the pines and they fired the 
brushwood for a light. One rode off for Dr. McGuire, and another 
with a penknife cut away the sleeve from the left arm through 
which had gone two bullets. A mounted man came at a gallop and 
threw himself from his horse. It was A. P. Hill. ‘General, general! 
you are not much hurt?” 

“Ves, I think I am," said Stonewall Jackson. “And my wounds 
are from my own men.’ 

Hill drew off the gauntlets that were all blood soaked, and with 
his handkerchief tried to bind up the arm, shattered and with the 
main artery cut. A courier came up. “Sir, sir! a body of the enemy 
is close at hand —”’ 

The aides lifted the wounded general. “No one,” said Hill, 
“must tell the troops who was wounded.” The other opened his 
eyes. ‘Tell them simply that you have a wounded officer. General 
Hill, you are in command now. Press right on.” 

With a gesture of sorrow Hill went, returning to the front. The 
others rested at the edge of the road. At that moment the Federal 
batteries opened, a hissing storm of shot and shell, a tornado meant 
measurably to retard that anticipated, grey onrush. The range was 
high. Aides and couriers laid the wounded leader on the earth and 
made of their bodies a screen. The trees were cut, the earth was 
torn up; there was a howling as of unchained fiends. There passed 
what seemed an eternity and was but ten minutes. The great blue 
guns slightly changed the direction of their fire. The storm howled 
away from the group by the road, and the men again lifted Jackson. 
He stood now on his feet; and because troops were heard approach- 
ing, and because it must not be known that he was hurt, all moved 
into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road came on — 
Pender’s brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and asked 
who was wounded. “A field officer,”” answered one, but there came 
from some direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He 
sprang from his horse. “Don’t say anything about it, General Pen- 
der,” said Jackson. “Press on, sir, press on!” 

“General, they are using all their artillery. It isa very deadly fire. 
In the darkness it may disorganize —’’ 


THE RIVER 677 


The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. 
““You must hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out 
to the last, sir.” 

“T will, general, I will,’’ said Pender. 

A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid 
upon it. The little procession moved toward Dowdall’s Tavern. A 
shot pierced the arm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the 
litter. It tilted. The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring 
afresh the wounded limb, striking and bruising his side. They 
raised him, pale, now, and silent, and at last they struggled through 
the wood to a little clearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, 
too, came the doctor, a man whom he loved, and knelt beside him. 
“T hope that you are not badly hurt, general ?” 

“Yes, Iam, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying.” 

In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutch- 
field, painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. 
“‘He is n’t badly hurt?” 

“Yes. Badly hurt.” 

Crutchfield groaned. “Oh, my God!” Stonewall Jackson heard 
and made the ambulance stop. ‘‘ You must do something for Colonel 
Crutchfield, doctor. Don’t let him suffer.” 

A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece oi 
shell. Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the 
guidance through the night of the advance upon the roads to the 
fords, was killed. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of 
Chancellorsville, fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness 
chanted a battle chant indeed to the moon, the moon that was pale 
and wan as if wearied with silvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a 
litter, just back of his advanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. 
Stuart was far toward Ely’s Ford, riding through the night in plume 
and fighting jacket. The straining horses, the recalling order, reached 
him. 

“General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! 
I in command! My God, man! all changed like that ? Right about 
face! Forward! March!” 

There was, that night, no grey assault. But the dawn broke clear 
and found the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilder- 
ness rolled in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d 


678 THE LONG ROLL 


Corps were yet two miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and 
all the strong intrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker’s 
courageous men. 

Now followed Jeb Stuart’s fight. In the dawn the 2d Corps, 
swung from the right by a master hand, struck full against the Fed- 
eral centre, struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May 
morning broke a thunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal 
on peal, crash on crash! The grey shells struck the Chancellor 
house. They set it on fire. It went up in flames. A fragment of 
shell struck and stunned Fighting Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for 
hours and Couch took command. The grey musketry, the blue 
musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire. In places it 
was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the scrub; 
the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered 
the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack 
against his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His 
right and Anderson’s left now touched. The Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia was again a unit. 

Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His 
beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very 
grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson 
was badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day 
and the Wilderness remembered. “Forward. Charge!” cried Jeb 
Stuart. ‘Remember Jackson!”’ He swung his plumed hat. Yaaaiil 
Yaaaaaaatihhh ! Vaaaaaii ! Yaaatitihhh! yelled the grey lines, and 
charged. Stuart went at their head, and as he went he raised in 
song his golden, ringing voice. ‘‘Old Joe Hooker, won’t you come 
out of the Wilderness ? ” 

By ten o’clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns 
silenced, Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wil- 
derness, after all, was Virginian. She broke into a war song of tri- 
umph. Her flowers bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to 
the front. Oh, the Army of Northern Virginia cheered him! ‘Men, 
men!” he said, “you have done well, you have done well! Where is 
General Jackson?” 7 

He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field 
hospital near Dowdall’s Tavern. General:—TI cannot express my 
regret. Could I have directed events I should have chosen for the good 


THE RIVER 679 


of the country to be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon 
the victory, which is due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, 
your obedient servant, R. E. Lee. 

An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in 
the deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then 
he said, ‘‘General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to 
God.” . 

For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, 
at the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then 
they rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of 
the Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the 
southern shore and the road to Richmond — Richmond no nearer 
for McDowell, no nearer for McClellan, no nearer for Pope, no 
nearer for Burnside, no nearer for Hooker, no nearer after two years 
of war! In the Wilderness and thereabouts Hooker lost seventeen 
thousand men, thirteen guns, and fifteen hundred rounds of can- 
non ammunition, twenty thousand rifles, three hundred thousand 
rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army of Northern Virginia 
lost twelve thousand men. 

On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from 
the Wilderness to Guiney’s Station. Here was a large old residence 
— the Chandler house — within a sweep of grass and trees; about 
it one or two small buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to 
its doors with wounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in 
a rude cabin among the trees. The left arm had been amputated 
in the field hospital. He was thought to be doing well, though at 
times he complained of the side which, in the fall from the litter, 
had been struck and bruised. 

At daylight on Thursday he had his physician called. “Iam suf- 
fering great pain,” he said. “See what is the matter with me.”’ And 
presently, ‘Is it pneumonia ?”’ 

That afternoon his wife came. He was roused to speak to her, 
greeted her with love, then sank into something like stupor. From 
time to time he awakened from this, but there were also times when 
he was slightly delirious. He gave orders in a shadow of the old 
voice. “ You must hold out a little longer, men; you must hold out 
a little longer! . . . Press forward — press forward — press for- 
ward! . . . Give them canister, Major Pelham!” 


680 THE LONG ROLL 


Friday went by, and Saturday. The afternoon of this day he 
asked for his chaplain, Mr. Lacy. Later, in the twilight, his wife 
sang to him, old hymns that he loved. “Sing the fifty-first psalm in 
verse,”’ he said. She sang, — 


“‘ Show pity, Lord! O Lord, forgive — ” 


The night passed and Sunday the tenth dawned. He lay quiet, 
his right hand on his breast. One of the staff came for a moment to 
his bedside. ‘Who is preaching at headquarters to-day?’”’? He was 
told, and said, ‘‘Good! I wish I might be there.” 

The officer’s voice broke. “General, general! the whole army is 
praying for you. There’s a message from General Lee.” 

rv 6S, yes. Give It.” 

“‘He sends you his love. He says that you must recover; that you 
have lost your left arm, but that he would lose his right arm. He 
says tell you that he prayed for you last night as he had never 
prayed for himself. He repeats what he said in his note that for the 
good of Virginia and the South he could wish that he were lying here 
in your place —” 

The soldier on the bed smiled a little and shook his head. ‘ Better 
ten Jacksons should lie here than one Lee.” 

It was sunny weather, fair and sweet with all the bloom of May, 
the bright trees waving, the long grass rippling, waters flowing, the 
sky azure, bees about the flowers, the birds singing piercingly sweet, 
mother earth so beautiful, the sky down-bending, the light of the 
sun so gracious, warm, and vital! 

A little before noon, kneeling beside him, his wife told Stonewall 
Jackson that he would die. He smiled and laid his hand upon her 
bowed head. ‘‘ You are frightened, my child! Death is not so near. 
I may yet get well.” 

The doctor came to him. “Doctor, Anna tells me that I am to die 
to-day. Is it so?” 

“Oh, general, general! — It is so.” 

He lay silent a moment, then he said, “‘ Very goed, very good! It 
is all right.”’ 

Throughout the day his mind was now clouded, now clear. In one 
of the latter times he said there was something he was trying to re- 
member. There followed a half-hour of broken sleep and wandering, 


THE RIVER 681 


in the course of which he twice spoke a name, “ Deaderick.’’ Once 
he said “Horse Artillery,” and once “White Oak Swamp.” 

The alternate clear moments and the lapses into stupour or deli- 
rium were like the sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted 
at last, the prey at last of a shoreless sea. At times he came head 
and shoulders out of the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey- 
blue eyes full on one of his staff. All the staff was gathered in grief 
about the bed. ‘‘ When Richard Cleave,”’ he said, “asks for a court 
of enquiry let him have it. Tell General Lee —” The sea drew him 
under again. 

It hardly let him go any more; moment by moment now, it wore 
out the strong swimmer. The day drew on to afternoon. He lay 
straight upon the bed, silent for the most part, but now and then 
wandering a little. His wife bowed herself beside him; in a corner 
wept the old man, Jim. Outside the windows there seemed a hush 
as of death. 

“Pass the infantry to the front!’ ordered Stonewall Jackson. 
“Tell A. P. Hill to prepare for action!” The voice sank; there 
came a long silence; there was only heard the old man crying in 
the corner. Then, for the last time in this phase of being, the great 
soldier opened his eyes. In a moment he spoke, in a very sweet and 
calm- voice. ‘‘Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade 
of the trees.”’ He died. 


The bells tolled, the bells tolled in Richmond, tolled from each of 
her seven hills! Sombre was the sound of the minute guns, shaking 
the heart of the city! Oh, this capital knew the Dead March in Saul 
as a child knows his lullaby! To-day it had a depth and a height and 
was adirge indeed. To-day it wailed for a Chieftain, wailed through 
the streets where the rose and magnolia bloomed, wailed as may 
have wailed the trumpets when Priam brought Hector home. The 
great throng to either side the streets shivered beneath the wailing, 
beneath the low thunder of the drums. There was lacking no pomp 
of War, War who must have gauds with which to hide his naked 
horror. The guns boomed, the bells tolled, the muffled drums beat, 
beat! Regiments marched with reversed arms, with colours furled. 
There was mournful civic pomp, mournful official. There came a 
great black hearse drawn by four white horses. On it lay the body 


682 THE LONG ROLL 


of Stonewall Jackson, and over it was drawn the deep blue flag with 
the arms of Virginia, and likewise the starry banner of the eleven 
Confederate States. Oh, heart-breaking were the minute guns, and 
the tolling, tolling bells, and the deep, slow, heroic music, and the 
sobbing of the people! It was a cloud _ss day and filled with grief. 
Behind the hearse trod Little Sorrel. 

Beneath arching trees, by houses of mellow red brick, houses of 
pale grey stucco, by old porches and ironwork balconies, by wis- 
taria and climbing roses and magnolias with white chalices, the long 
procession bore Stonewall Jackson. By St. Paul’s they bore him, 
by Washington and the great bronze men in his company, by Jeffer- 
son and Marshall, by Henry and Mason, by Lewis and Nelson. 
They bore him over the greensward to the Capitol steps, and there 
the hearse stopped. Six generals lifted the coffin, Longstreet going 
before. The bells tolled and the Dead March rang, and all 
the people on the green slopes of the historic place uncovered their 
heads and wept. The coffin, high-borne, passed upward and be- 
tween the great, white, Doric columns. It passed into the Capitol 
and into the Hall of the Lower House. Here it rested before the 
Speaker’s Chair. 

All day Stonewall Jackson lay in state. Twenty thousand people, 
from the President of the Confederacy to the last poor wounded 
soldier who could creep hither, passed before the bier, looked upon 
the calm face, the flag-enshrouded form, lying among lilies before 
the Speaker’s Chair, in the Virginia Hall of Delegates, in the Capitol 
of the Confederacy. All day the bells tolled, all day the minute guns 
were fired. 

A man of the Stonewall Brigade, pausing his moment before the 
dead leader, first bent, then lifted his head. He was a scout, a blonde 
soldier, tall and strong, with a quiet, studious face and sea-blue 
eyes. He looked now at the vaulted roof as though he saw instead 
the sky. He spoke in a controlled, determined voice. “‘ What Stone- 
wall Jackson always said was just this: ‘Press forward!’” He 
passed on. 

Presently in line came a private soldier of A. P. Hill’s, a young 
man like a beautiful athlete from a frieze, an athlete who was also 
a philosopher. “Hail, great man of the past!’ he said. “If to- 


THE RIVER 683 


day you consort with Cesar, tell him we still make war.”’ He, too, 
went on. 

Others passed, and then there came an artilleryman, a gunner of 
the Horse Artillery. Grey-eyed, broad-browed, he stood his moment 
and gazed upon the dead soldier among the lilies. “‘ Hooker yet upon 
the Rappahannock,” he said. “‘We must have him across the Poto- 
mac, and we must ourselves invade Pennsylvania.” 


Che Riverside press 
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THE RIGHT coPUEL 


By IAN HAY 











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ENCHANTED GROUND 
An Episode in the Life of a Young Man 


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By MARY JOHNSTON 








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THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS 
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HUMAN BULLETS 


By TADAYOSHI SAKURAI 











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people.” — ew York World. 


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stern side of war, but for its revelation of Japanese ideals 
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of technical value.”’ — Zranscript, Boston. 


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BEP 24 192g We? sep 10) 1938 















































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